


Hangman

by Poetry



Series: Fem!Doctor [2]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Backstory, Bechdel Test Pass, Female Doctor (Doctor Who), Gen, Plotty, Pre-Relationship, Time Agency, Trust, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-06-21
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:45:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who can Jack trust when he can't even trust himself?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For those who are familiar with the fem!Doctor 'verse, this story is set before section X of "Mad Girl's Love Song." For those unfamiliar, all you need to know is that the Ninth Doctor is female and always has been. Beta'd by yamx.

“ _Every guilty person is his own hangman._ ”  
\- Seneca

Rose was excited.

It was time to buy new parts for the TARDIS, which to Rose meant _shopping_. And now that they had Jack around, she might have some company while the Doctor sought out what she needed.

"So where are we going?" Rose asked the Doctor. Jack was watching the console as the Doctor started to plot their destination. He always seemed to be doing that. The Doctor used to say it was because he was trying to figure out how best to steal the TARDIS. Rose would reply that he was probably just curious. The Doctor didn't say things like that about Jack anymore. Jack had earned that respect many times over, in Rose's estimation.

"Central Market Plaza, Villa della Costa, Outer Beta Aquarii, 5049," the Doctor said. "Would've preferred the 52nd century, better design, but there's a nasty time storm brewing in that part of the Vortex. Best not risk it."

Rose heard a sharp intake of breath, and turned to see Jack holding himself too still, his eyes locked on a point in the middle distance instead of the console. "What's wrong?" said Rose, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of the TARDIS materializing.

Jack didn't meet her eye. "Nothing. I just - thought of something I could've done to make the environmental sensor arrays scan more smoothly. You two can go ahead. I'll stay and patch up what I can."

The Doctor and Rose exchanged a look. Rose wanted to press him for the real reason why he was staying behind, to try to talk him out of it, but that might just make him clam up even more. Maybe they could talk about it afterward, once the Doctor got the parts they needed.

"Right then," the Doctor said, with cheer as false as Jack's calm. "We'll be back in a tick. Let's go, Rose." She took her by the hand and opened the doors. A world of painted glass, chartreuse skies, and a thousand whispering languages awaited them - but all Rose could see was the pain in the corners of Jack's face.

  


* * *

  
"All right, old girl. It's time to fix you up," Jack said aloud. That was what he wanted to do. He didn't want to key up the external view on the TARDIS' screen. He _definitely_ didn't want to see who might be out there. To see if -

Oh, _hells_. His fingers were tapping out the commands to key up the screen, without input from the more reasonable parts of his brain. The screen filled with the image of a bustling street fair, a plaza full of tents and flags fluttering in a breeze he could almost feel, surrounded by tall, spindly buildings made all of painted glass. The plaza bustled with shoppers of a dozen different species, many of them holding translation devices to their ears to understand each other. The sky was a luminous yellow-green, the flagstones of the plaza deep red.

Jack hated it.

The year was 5049. Two years ago, the Hive had invaded a backwater region of Inner Beta Aquarii called the Boeshane Peninsula. Jack's people had sent out a cry for help to their wealthier sister planet. Their fellow Beta Aquarians had done nothing to end the slaughter.

He instructed the TARDIS to zoom in on the view he had keyed up on the screen. New details stood out to his eye. Not everyone was striding casually through the marketplace, sampling the wares. Some were sweeping the red flagstones of the plaza. Some lurked in the shadows, watching the fruit vendors' stalls with hungry eyes. Jack knew their look. The traditional tasseled vests were tattered, the women's shoulder tattoos covered in a layer of grime, but he knew them for what they were - refugees from the Boe.

Jack's fists clenched around the edge of the console. How many of the refugees in the plaza had children somewhere, starving? Was there anything available to them but crime and the most menial labor? He couldn't just stand here and see his people reduced to this.

He could get the Doctor and Rose's help. He could even get their help without revealing his connection to the refugees. _I was watching the marketplace on the TARDIS' screen and I couldn't help but notice… we've gotta do something, right?_

His mind made up, Jack ran to get his World War II RAF coat from the wardrobe room – he wanted to look as unlike a 'Shane as possible – then stepped out into the plaza. The Doctor and Rose weren't in sight, but that wasn't a problem. He started tapping out a command into his wrist strap to scan for a humanoid with two hearts, ducking behind and around the colorful stalls as he went in case someone noticed he had illicit Time Agency gear. The Central Market Plaza was a favorite haunt of Time Agents on their afternoon breaks; if one of them spotted him, Internal Affairs would know about it in short order.

When Jack was halfway across the plaza, he began to notice that he was being followed.

It wasn't anything obvious or specific that gave it away – his pursuers were professionals, Jack could tell. He just had an instinct for it after spending his formative years in the military. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he _knew_.

Jack weaved through the plaza, using all the tricks to throw off a tail he'd learned over the years, but the pursuers were closing in around him. They were chasing him out of Central Market Plaza, towards a maze of back alleys in a run-down manufacturing district to the south. That would mean trouble for him. In the plaza there were witnesses. Most of the people who might want Jack dead or captured preferred not to have witnesses. He could head straight for the Doctor and Rose, but he didn't want to endanger them for his sake. So he stopped running at the edge of the plaza, turned around, and reached for his sonic blaster.

Before he could draw it out from under his coat, he felt the barrel of another blaster against the back of his head. Jack swore under his breath. How could he not have seen?

“Step back, everyone,” said a voice, steady with the weight of authority. “This man is under arrest.”

* * *

  
Rose had enjoyed the market at first, but by now it was getting on her nerves. The moment she spent money – on a jeweled comb she thought her mum might like – a floating hologram projector started following her around, blasting news headlines, sports updates, and weather reports. Every few minutes it would interrupt the barrage of information to yammer at her to subscribe to the Solar Flare Hologram Service “ _for only 13 credits a fortnight!_ ” She made her way to the tents where the Doctor was browsing for parts, in the hope that she could use the sonic screwdriver to blast the hologram projector to bits.

"The Seagirders won two tilts against Leeward Bay, placing them in the lead for this season,” the projector chirped, bobbing right next to Rose's ear. “And that's the latest in sport for today. Let's move on to our top headlines!”

Rose waved her arms above her head as soon as she caught a glimpse of the Doctor through the crowd. She was arguing with a vendor, rolling her eyes and waving dismissively at all the merchandise on display. When she caught sight of Rose, she met her eye, then looked at the hologram projector and raised an eyebrow. Rose grimaced at the thing and made her way closer.

"Solar Flare Hologram Service – bringing you the latest from all over the Greater Bell Coast area. The Villa della Costa Enforcer Squad has just brought into custody ex-Time Agent Shaylin Sel-Ahn, once renowned as the first Agent recruited from the Boeshane Peninsula.” A holographic face appeared across Rose's field of vision, heart-stoppingly familiar. “Sel-Ahn has been charged with theft of and intent to use a timeline tracer. He is currently awaiting trial and a possible death sentence for the crime.”

Rose shoved the projector out of her sight. She ran to the Doctor, elbowing the crowd aside. She knew instantly from her face that she'd heard and seen everything she just had. “Doctor, we've got to do something!” she cried, seizing the lapels of her jacket. “Where've they taken him?”

The Doctor looked distant, troubled. She was facing Rose, but wasn't really seeing her. “He'll be under maximum security. A timeline tracer is dangerous contraband. To say the Time Agency'll take it seriously doesn't do it justice.”

"What's a timeline tracer?”

"Walk. I'll explain.” The Doctor took her by the hand and guided them out of Central Market Plaza, down a boulevard lined with fragrant shrubs and glittering panes of glass. “Suppose I'm an ape with an overinflated ego who wants to muck about with time,” she began. Rose, indignant, drew breath to tell the Doctor exactly what she thought of _her_ ego, but she cut Rose off. “Not _all_ humans with temporal technology. Some of you are perfectly capable of using it without bringing on Armageddon. But there are plenty of Time Agents who think that just because they're clever enough to invent time machines, they must be clever enough to use them properly.”

"Now suppose I want to change time so that this shrub is a meter taller,” the Doctor said, gesturing to a sweet-smelling shrub with purple stems. “Simple enough. I use my Time Agency wrist strap to lock on to its temporal signature. I can speed up its timeline so it grows faster, or I can travel to an early point in its development and dump a load of fertilizer on it. But if I decide I want to go back and change time to make you ginger instead of blonde – that's more complicated.”

“There's no way you could make me a ginger. I'd look dreadful as a ginger.”

"Might be, but I'm a Time Agent, so of course I know how to do it. I think, why don't I go back to when Rose first dyed her hair and talk her into going ginger instead? But your timeline's much harder to get a fix on than that shrub's – and not just because you're a time traveler. Sentient beings are complex, whether they've traveled in time or not. They've got a lot more potential futures than a shrub. You make choices, and that affects your timestream. How do I find the exact moment in your timeline when you made the decision that led to you being blonde? The Time Agency invented the timeline tracer to do just that: lock on to the temporal signature of a sentient being.”

"But that's – _wrong_. The Time Agency shouldn't have the power to change my life like that. It was my choice to dye my hair whatever color I wanted to. They shouldn't take that away from me, or from anyone else.”

"There are only three or four timeline tracers in existence, and the Time Agency keeps them locked tight, for just that reason. That's why stealing one carries the death sentence.”

"You don't think Jack would do something like that.” Rose searched the Doctor's face. “Do you?”

"No,” she said. “I don't.”

"Then let's go.”

* * *

  
_A timeline tracer._

Jack was in max-security solitary confinement. His cell was clean and the cot large enough for him to stretch out fully, if not comfortably. It was an improvement over some of the cells he'd been in with the Doctor and Rose, except that there was only just enough light to avoid tripping into objects, and escape far more difficult. The Time Agency didn't take chances with its prisoners.

 _I've stolen a timeline tracer._ He couldn't remember doing it, but that didn't mean anything. Before his two missing years, he'd been a lieutenant. If he'd gotten promoted to captain during those two years, that would have given him enough security clearance to pull off the heist. Jack grimaced at the irony. He'd chosen the name “Captain Jack Harkness” as a badge of honor. The real Captain Jack Harkness had died in combat, and con man though he had been, he'd respected that. He kept it after coming aboard the TARDIS as a reminder of the kind of man he wanted to be. Now it seemed that he'd not only achieved the rank of captain already, but abused it for his own gain.

He wondered what would happen at the trial. With two years missing from his memory, he couldn't exactly be brought to the witness stand. His memories were probably in storage somewhere; they'd examine them directly as evidence, probably without even giving them back first. If he had money for an advocate, he could fight for access to the evidence, maybe get a fairer trial, but none of his money was legitimately earned. His accounts would all be frozen by now. He'd burned all his bridges at the Agency – after losing his memories, he'd made a point of cutting everyone off before he quit.

The Doctor and Rose weren't coming for him, of that he was certain. Anyone who stole tech that dangerous deserved the full force of the law. The Doctor knew that.

No money. No connections. No hope.

A pinprick of light sparked on the wall of Jack's cell. It was tiny, but overwhelmingly bright in contrast to the dimness of the cell. There was a distant murmur, like the rhythmic sigh of waves against the shore that lulled Jack to sleep every night back on the Boe. The murmur resolved into a voice coming from a speaker in the ceiling. “Convict Sel-Ahn,” the voice said. “You have a visitor.” It had the crisp tones of an artificial intelligence. One of the robo-wardens, then.

That didn't track. Who on O.B.A. cared enough about him to bother visiting? “Who is it?” he asked.

“I am authorized to permit visitation only from immediate family members and legal counsel,” the AI said. “The visitor's identification is authorized. She has been allowed access.”

Another voice came through the speaker. It was low and even, with a burr to the consonants peculiar to the very tip of the Boeshane Peninsula. “I'll give you a minute or two to adjust before I open the visual input to your cell. We've got a lot to discuss, Nazaire.”

At first he thought it had to be a trick, a tactic the prosecution was using to get him to confess. A voice was easy enough to fake. But then he heard the voice say his name, the name he was born with, the one he cast off for good when he enlisted in the I.B.A. military. That was when he knew he had to be dreaming.

It was only when he was dreaming that he ever heard his madrina's voice.

* * *

"This isn't going to be easy,” the Doctor said grimly. She scowled to herself and adjusted a few dials on the TARDIS console.

“I thought the Time Agency was just 'a great lot of overinflated twits',” said Rose, mimicking the Doctor's accent.

“A great lot of overinflated twits with a paranoid streak,” the Doctor amended. “I've got Jack's temporal signature and biometrics stored in the TARDIS' memory banks, but the Agency'll mask those. Their prisons are the most secure in the galaxy, maybe the entire galactic cluster.”

“So what do we do?”

The Doctor stared at the Time Rotor, her brow furrowed in thought. “Someone must have set him up,” she said. “Jack quit the Agency when they took his memories. The first agent ever to come from the Boeshane Peninsula, and he resigned. It must have been a scandal. If you've stolen a timeline tracer, why not let a disgraced ex-agent take the blame?”

“Whoever did it has got to be around here somewhere, if they're helping to set up the trial. Can't you scan for the tracer somehow and find out who stole it?”

The Doctor shook her head. “I can't detect it unless I know when and where it's been used. Then I can trace the temporal disturbance back to its source.”

Rose chewed on her lip. “What exactly can you do with a timeline tracer? Well, not you. A Time Agent. You said it isn't easy. If someone were just learning how to use it…”

“Changing the course of a timestream is tricky business,” the Doctor confirmed. “It's easy to damage it, delete parts of it, but rewriting it entirely is beyond what most Time Agents are capable of.”

“Delete parts of it?” Rose said. “Like two years, maybe?”

The Doctor lit up like a Christmas tree. “Of course! Fantastic, Rose! I ought to have checked his timestream for signs of damage ages ago.”

“Yeah,” said Rose, a hint of accusation in her voice. “Why didn't you?”

The Doctor sighed. “Because I thought it must've been something he did to himself. Losing memories is a common side effect of messing about with time in ways you shouldn't.”

Rose touched the Doctor's arm. “We'll talk about this later,” she said firmly. There was no way the Doctor was going to weasel her way out of a stern talking-to, but they needed to focus. “Is there anything we can do for him now?”

“Plenty. I've scanned him in the medbay a time or three. I should have the artron energy readings I need to reconstruct the damage to his timestream from the tracer.” She tapped a few keys on the console and drew up some squiggly lines and numbers that made Rose's eyes cross. The Doctor spent a few minutes inspecting a figure that looked like a giant knot made from glowing thread. “Have a look at this, Rose,” the Doctor said, zooming in on a portion of the knot. The glowing thread at this part of the knot looked tattered and frayed, almost to the point of being broken entirely. “These are the two years that got taken away. They're not undone – whatever he did during those years still happened – but they've been scrubbed from his personal timestream. It's not the kind of damage you see from self-inflicted paradox; you'd get more fraying up- and downstream from that.”

“So it wasn't his fault,” Rose said.

“No. In fact, now that I think about it,” the Doctor said, “it can't've just been any Time Agent who did this to him. All agents' personal timestreams are protected from tampering. I know – I've had to sort out some of the Agency's mistakes a time or two.” At a typed command, a translucent blue envelope appeared around the image representing Jack's timestream. A message flashed on the screen: SECURITY CLEARANCE REQUIRED. The Doctor's fingers flew across the keyboard, calling up more figures beyond Rose's comprehension. She frowned at the screen. “Looks like the only people in the Agency who'd be able to unlock his timestream would be himself, his superior officer, and his partner. Security measure, in case he or someone else needs to go in and repair his timestream in the immediate aftermath of a paradox.”

“Someone he was supposed to be able to trust,” Rose said. “Oh, _Jack_.”

Rose could have sworn that for a moment, the Doctor looked almost ashamed.

* * *

  
The light began as a pinprick. Now it was the first light of dawn peeking through a frosted window. The window expanded from the size of Jack's palm to the size of his entire face. Then the light brightened, and shapes began to reveal themselves like long-awaited secrets: white edges, brown peaks, dark curves.

Jack's madrina's face appeared to him then: pointed chin, tanned skin, solemn blue eyes huge between dark eyelashes. She looked older, her face pinched with pain, than he remembered. There were flecks of silver in her short black hair.

“Madrina,” Jack said. A note of longing crept into his voice. If only he could reach out, hold her hand, anything. “Ive, what are you doing here?” _Why am I dreaming about you?_ asked the part of his mind that still wasn't convinced that this was real.

Her face tightened into anger. “Because you were caught, you _fool_. What did you think I was going to do?”

Jack closed his eyes. His madrina was mixed up in this. Ivory, who when last he'd seen her would never have come near a Time Agency prison. The war had changed that, along with everything else. “This isn't your fault,” he said quietly. “You shouldn't even be – just _leave_ , Ive, please.”

Ivory's eyes narrowed. “Don't try that with me. I'm not leaving until you tell me where it is. You've got the right to message your family, even from here. Send me the coordinates on an encrypted channel, now.”

“What are you -”

“I need it, Nazaire!” she hissed. “When I married your father and your mother, I promised to protect them and any offspring of ours! You cast off the protection of those vows when you pledged yourself to the military, but they still apply to our younger child! Gray doesn't have to die. Not if you tell me where it is.”

Jack just stared at her for a moment. Had she lost her mind? How could she possibly think the timeline tracer would be able to save Gray? Even if it did work, the temporal disturbance caused by a person being alive who shouldn't be could have terrible consequences. He had learned from the Doctor that you couldn't treat the fabric of time that way. But of course – he hadn't known that before he met the Doctor. Sure, he'd had lessons in temporal mechanics in training for the Agency, but he hadn't truly understood it until much later. During those missing two years, he might have thought it possible. He might have seen his mother and madrina again, given them false hope, then gone and done something incredibly stupid.

Stupid, but with good intentions. That seemed to be the story of his life.

“I don't know where it is,” Jack said. “Even if I did know, you couldn't use it. You wouldn't know how.”

“Surely someone could help us,” said Ivory, almost pleading now. “You could put us in contact with someone who knows. You've got to have some connections.”

Jack shook his head. “I do know a few people who know how to work that kind of tech, but I promise you, Ive – I don't know where it is. There's nothing I can do.”

“How did you get caught?” she demanded. “What did you do wrong this time?”

What he did wrong was to agree to steal the timeline tracer in the first place. Of course, he couldn't say that to his madrina. She wouldn't understand. “People have been trying to steal timeline tracers from the Agency ever since they were invented. No one's ever gotten away clean. It was a long shot. You must have known that.”

“Where have you _been_ , Naz? Two more timeline tracers have gone missing in the past two years, and you're the only one who's been arrested for it! You promised me you'd do everything in your power to get Gray back. How could you have let this happen?” Ivory's face crumpled, and Jack could see clearly every worry line she'd accumulated since he'd seen her last. “I thought I could be proud of you again. That you could redeem yourself. I shouldn't have placed my trust in you.”

Ivory couldn't have hurt Jack worse if she'd smashed into his cell and grabbed him by the throat. Still, he thought, it was better this way. Better that she lose hope, if it would make her give up and never come near the Time Agency again. “No,” he said, after a shuddering breath. “You shouldn't have. Just go home. Forget you ever had sons. You'll be safer that way.”

His madrina switched off the vid feed without another word. It was as if she had forgotten him already.

* * *

  
Rose went through the motions of making a sandwich, though her mind wasn't in it. She felt useless just sitting here in the TARDIS while Jack was locked up in some Time Agency dungeon. _Are they feeding him properly?_ she wondered as she took a bite of the sandwich. _What if they're torturing him? I wouldn't put it past them._

The Doctor walked into the kitchen holding a sheaf of printouts. She set two stacks of them on the table and began, without preamble, “Files on Jack's former partner and superior officer.” Another set of printouts joined the first two. “Memos from the Internal Affairs department on recent security concerns. Apparently three timeline tracers have gone missing. Some officers think Jack's responsible for all three of them, but there's a lot of disagreement.”

Rose inspected the file on Jack's former partner, taking care not to let any crumbs from her sandwich fall on the paper.

The picture on it was of a human, or near enough. He had brown hair, intensely blue eyes, cheekbones cut like diamonds, a confident smile, and a physique fit enough to rival Jack's. In fact, he reminded her a lot of Jack, except that he looked more dangerous somehow. His name, according to the file, was Makarios Thibadeaux.

“Agent Thibadeaux is quite the troublemaker, looks like,” the Doctor said, pointing to different subsections on the printout as she explained. “He's got at least five official warnings from higher-ups, see? They can't discharge him, though, Thibadeaux's too big a name. His great-aunt works for the enforcement arm of the Shadow Proclamation. Always partnered with higher-ranking agents, including one Lieutenant – later promoted to Captain – Shaylin Sel-Ahn. Together for five years linear, including the two years missing from Jack's memory.”

“So he really is a captain after all,” Rose said. “Whoever's above him must be really high up in the Agency.”

“Major A. E. Sunflash,” the Doctor said, pointing to another file. It had a picture of what looked like some kind of bird, or perhaps a griffin from a fantasy book. It had a magnificent crest of golden feathers and a fierce three-eyed stare. “Spotless record, not to mention an underling who was left in a time loop by her partner and almost got trapped for good. Sunflash took the incident seriously and strung the partner out to dry. I'm willing to bet Jack's superior officer wouldn't have any part in a betrayal like this.”

Rose nodded, then skimmed the internal memos from the Agency. It seemed that most of the agents were convinced of Jack's guilt, but there were a few who insisted that he was a good man who wouldn't abuse his power like that. One thing was for sure: Internal Affairs was under a lot of pressure to find out who stole the timeline tracers. _Jack must be a convenient scapegoat_ , Rose thought bitterly. _They can hang him out to dry and cover their own arses_. She polished off the last of her crusts and looked up at the Doctor. “We'd better find these people before Jack gets hurt.”

“Oh, we'll find them,” the Doctor said grimly. “Whatever it takes.”

* * *

The moment played over and over behind Jack's eyelids, just like it had when he was younger. Every time he shut his eyes, he could feel Gray's hand in his, small and warm and slick with fear-sweat. A gritty wind blew hot against his face, carrying the sound of distant screams. He saw Gray's eyes, spilling over with tears from the force of the wind or maybe from sheer terror.

He was used to guilt, the way it burned in his throat like bile. For a week after his terrible mistake with the Chula ambulance, he couldn't even look at the Doctor without feeling it. But this guilt, the oldest of all, felt different somehow. Did it hurt less, now, than it once had? Adolescence and the confusion of war had made the guilt so ragged and sharp back then, like broken glass lodged in his chest.

A pinprick of light, expanding. The sigh of a distant ocean. Another visitor? Was there anyone left on this planet who cared enough? “Convict Sel-Ahn.” The voice of the robo-warden was harsh in his ears, now accustomed to the silence of the cell. “You have a visitor. Identification authorized.”

 _Gray_ , thought Jack for a wild moment. _Gray's alive. He's come to forgive me, to set me free_. A view-screen faded slowly into being, the roundness of a feminine face. Not Gray. Ivory wasn't coming back. Must be -

“Nazaire,” said a voice, kindly. That accent again, so familiar, but softer and huskier than Ivory's. “It's your mother. Are you all right?”

“I thought I was getting the presidential suite, but here I am,” Jack rasped, joking out of pure reflex. “I ought to lodge a complaint."

Collette laughed, low and quiet and tinged with sadness. “Always the joker. You got that from your father, I think." Her dark hair, now threaded with silver, curled around her face like smoke.

"Yeah." Jack wanted to look away, but he couldn't. He hadn't seen his mother in years, and he might never see her again. "Look, mum, you shouldn't be here. I don't - "

"I know," she said. "Ive told me everything. I wanted to see you. That's all."

He wanted to believe it, but some part of him doubted that she would go through the hellish Time Agency security protocols just so she could say hello. “Fine. You've seen me. Now go.” If the Agency wanted information from him and didn't care too much about how they got it, there would be no better way to get him to talk than to threaten his mother. They could be listening right now, assessing whether he cared enough about Collette for her capture to break him. Not everyone in the Agency was that corrupt, but he didn't know who was in power anymore. He had always worried that the worst elements in the Agency were gathering more influence all the time. He couldn't let his mother take that risk.

“ _Nazaire_. Please don't be like this. I just – I know Ivory said some harsh things to you. I didn't want you to be locked up here thinking we don't love you. You tried, Naz. You did everything you could to save Gray. Not for your own gain, but for our family. It means the world to me.”

Jack couldn't speak. His mother was thanking him for something wished with all his heart he'd never done. She thought he was a martyr, putting his freedom and possibly his life on the line for the noblest of causes. He knew that he was being rightfully punished for a foolish, misguided decision. But he couldn't tell her that. It would hurt her too much. Instead, he just stared at her, his throat working to hold back tears.

“I know someone who can help,” Collette said quietly. “Ekozma – I don't know if you remember him – is an advocate now. One of the few 'Shanes with any clout at all, these days. We don't have any way to pay him, but he says he'll take your case.”

“If?” There was always an _if_.

“If you tell him how you did it,” she said. “Everything. With documentation.”

The tatters of her hope shone through in her grey eyes. It was more than Jack could bear. He couldn't remember how he'd done it. But even if he could, he wouldn't tell, not even to save his own skin. There could be no doubt that Ekozma wasn't asking out of professional curiosity. Jack must have come up with some elaborate scheme to steal the timeline tracer. Ekozma could sell the information of how he did it to the highest bidder, and there'd be yet another piece of dangerous temporal technology in the hands of a criminal. Collette wouldn't understand all of that, of course. She couldn't know the consequences. All she would know was that her son was giving up his only chance at freedom. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I can't. The Time Agency took away two years of my memories. I have no idea how it happened.”

“Is that why you quit?”

“Yeah,” Jack said grimly.

Collette's hands tightened in her lap. “I don't believe it. I just can't. You're _up_ to something, Naz. You'd never let yourself get cornered like this. You have some other way out, and you're not telling me.”

It would have been true, once upon a time. Shaylin Sel-Ahn knew people who could bribe and intimidate Internal Affairs into letting him walk. But he'd sworn to himself never to turn to those people again, after waking up with a hole in his memory that no one would explain. Collette looked so disapproving, the corners of her mouth turned in a tight frown – imagining all the dirty tricks he had up his sleeve, probably. He wanted to plead with his mother to believe that he wasn't that kind of man anymore, that she was his only hope, but that would give away his heart to any Time Agents who might be listening. Besides, the longer she stayed here, the more tempting of a target she might become for those in the Agency who cared more about ends than means.

“Maybe I do,” Jack said, forcing harshness into his tone. “Maybe I don't. Either way, you're not going to find out from me. Just walk away.”

He didn't really want her to leave. Deep down, the child who'd been forced to grow up too fast was pleading Collette not to listen to him, to stay with him and chant old poems in her steady voice like she did every evening for the children of their longhouse.

But instead, she murmured farewell and turned away, leaving him alone in the dark.  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “ _Slack your rope, hangman, slack it for a while.  
>  I think I see my true love coming, riding many a mile.  
> True love, have you brought me hope, or have you paid my fee?  
> Or have you come to see me hanging from the gallows tree?_”  
> \- from “The Maid Freed From the Gallows Tree”, traditional folk ballad

Rose had been looking forward to tracking down the people who'd betrayed Jack. She liked playing detective with the Doctor, and she knew she'd feel satisfied when the real criminals had to face the consequences of their actions. She hadn't expected her detective work to involve chatting with bartenders in seedy nightclubs while wearing a catsuit made of what Rose supposed might be feathers.

She'd objected loudly to the outfit, of course, but the Doctor had calmly pointed out that some of Thibadeaux's official reprimands had been for missing important appointments in favor of trysts with various lovers. The prospect of sex distracted him from his duties; that could work to their advantage. Of course, it also meant unwelcome attention from all kinds of people, some of whom Rose wouldn't have thought sexually compatible with humans at all. It was a bit gratifying, though, to see how stroppy the Doctor got with anyone who came too close to Rose.

The reason they were visiting nightclubs in the first place was because of a particularly colourful incident in Thibadeaux's record. Apparently he'd started a bar fight that turned into a full-blown riot. Most of the clubs in Villa della Costa had banned him after that, which narrowed down the places he might be on a weekend night.

 _(“Ooh, the trouble-making agent?” the barkeep had cooed at the last place they'd visited, one of her tentacles inching perilously toward Rose's arm. “He left with someone a while ago. He'll be back on the prowl, though, make no mistake – he never finishes the night after just one. But you'll stay a while, little lady, won't you? Maybe you'll find someone else to your liking.”)_

Rose ordered a drink, one the Doctor assured her she'd find suitable for her twenty-first century palate, and sipped. She was already feeling a little warm and loose from the drinks she'd ordered at every other place they'd been. It wasn't worth the risk of being tipsy at a critical moment. The music made Rose feel dizzy enough as it was. It never seemed to stick to a stable rhythm and oozed between pitches like molasses. The lights set in the ceiling refracted shards of green and purple that played drunkenly over her skin. How could anyone think this was a fun place for a night out?

“Not from around here, are we?” said a smooth voice from behind Rose. She turned around, and promptly took a mouthful of her drink to keep herself from squeaking in surprise. It was Agent Thibadeaux himself – and he looked even better than he had in the photograph. He wore nothing but a red sarong that came down to his knees and a set of ropes crisscrossed over his very muscular chest. He had a confident swagger in the way he held himself, his hip against the bar, and he gave off a heady smell like musk and bitter orange. _This man helped put Jack in prison,_ she reminded herself sternly.

“How'd you know?” said Rose, sounding as flustered and off-balance as she felt.

“You're drinking Mluwe's. That's the mildest brand of spice mead there is. Locals prefer a bit more… kick.” There was a predatory glint in his eye, a distant cousin to the one Jack got when he made a suggestive remark.

“Really?” she said, playing along. “How spicy do you take yours?” Her tongue didn't creep along her teeth like it always seemed to when she was teasing Jack or the Doctor.

“As spicy as they come.” The glint in his eye became an outright leer. He stroked her wrist. His hand was so warm she could feel it through the fabric of the catsuit. “I like the feathers. The colors suit you.”

As he spoke, his hand slithered up her arm toward her shoulder, and the smell of musk and bitter orange got stronger. His eyes were a very lovely blue, warmer than Jack's or the Doctor's. She imagined unspeakable Time Agency prison cells to keep her focus. “You have… really nice eyes. I'd like to have a closer look at them. Someplace more private,” she said, her mouth dry. It sounded like a bad pick-up line even to her own ears, but she needed to lure him to the unisex toilet where the Doctor was waiting.

His other arm circled around the small of her back, and she had a feeling that he was checking for weapons and copping a feel in equal measure. Rose let him. She wasn't carrying any weapons, and that would probably get him to relax enough to follow her into the toilet. She could feel his wrist strap digging into her a little. It was just like Jack's, she mused.

Thibadeaux withdrew his arm from the small of her back and cast a glance at the face of his wrist strap. His eyebrow quirked, and he leaned in to murmur in her ear, “I'm getting some interesting readings off my wrist strap from you, girlie. Care to explain how a bird who's never been affiliated with the Time Agency manages to give off so much artron energy?”

Rose closed her eyes and remembered the last time a Time Agent held her close and murmured in her ear. She chose her words carefully. “Let's just say I'm a freelancer.”

“So is this business or pleasure?” Thibadeaux growled.

Rose hooked her hand around the back of his neck. “Pleasure,” she said, and tried to steer him toward the toilet.

He held firm. “If it's pleasure you're after, I'd rather keep it in the open.” He added with a leer, “They don't have rules against that sort of thing 'round here.”

Of that, she had no doubt. There had been some suspicious noises coming from one of the shadier corners when she'd first walked in. It was time to give the signal. “All right then,” she said, giving what she hoped was a flirtatious smile. “I'll buy you a drink. Barkeep! I'd like a mug of hot sosaberry cordial for the lovely gentleman.” _Hot sosaberry cordial_ meant danger, but not life-and-death; _the lovely gentleman_ meant Thibadeaux.

The Doctor emerged from the toilet, her steady intensity shining like a beacon through the crowd. Thibadeaux turned his head immediately and took in the Time Lady with a mixture of apprehension and interest. All _kinds_ of interest – that sarong didn't hide much. Rose suppressed a scowl and gestured for the Doctor to come over. “My partner and I want to speak to you,” she said. “Privately.”

Thibadeaux licked his lips, eyes alight.

Rose and the Doctor looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

* * *

 

“Agent Shaylin Sel-Ahn is called to trial before the magistrates of the Inner Beta Aquarian holdings of the Time Agency. You may take your seat before the assembly.”

He hated hearing that name. Shaylin was a man without a home, without aspirations, adrift, his responsibilities as a Time Agent providing his only anchor to the universe. He didn't want to be Shaylin. Perched in the highest chair of the Time Agency magistracy, pinned by the protocol officer's cool stare, he felt too much like the man he once had been.

“Agent Shaylin Sel-Ahn, you have been charged with theft of Class V technology, abuse of rank, four counts of bribery, six counts of blackmail, and unauthorized use of Class V technology.”

Unauthorized use ? A wave of panic washed over him. He'd expected to be charged with theft and abuse of rank, but there'd been nothing to suggest that he'd actually used the timeline tracer. Could he really have been that stupid? Of course he could have. Captain Sel-Ahn had been a high-ranking Time Agent, supremely confident in his abilities. What was to keep him from using his ill-gotten power? The crimes he'd committed, and the sentence he was now facing, were far worse than he'd thought.

“The magistrates summon forth Detective-Lieutenant Ryoshka, of Internal Affairs, to present this case before the assembly.”

Any last shreds of hope Jack might have harbored about the harshness of his sentence withered and died. Ryoshka Xi'a was cold, impersonal, and pitiless, but she wasn't beholden to the internal politics of the Agency. If she was presenting the case, it wasn't because she'd been bribed, or because she had a personal vendetta against him. It was because she had seen the evidence and found it compelling enough to really believe he'd done it. Not only that, she was smart enough to use that evidence to convince the magistrates to pass whichever sentence she saw fit for the crime. Ryoshka was a Kelsparrd draconian of the Twelfth Ocean, and her culture did not look kindly upon professionals who betrayed their employers.

Ryoshka was slow outside of the water, but beautiful for all that. The claws at the end of her flippers clicked against the shimmering tile as she ascended to the level just below Jack's chair at the height of the chamber, facing him. Her eyes were opaque rainbow spheres, unreadable.

“Agent Sel-Ahn, I accuse you first of abusing your rank as captain to gain access to the classified technology vaults. You claimed to be pursuing a trafficker of contraband Class V technology. For this supposed investigation, you needed to run tests on technology in the vaults and compare the results with readings from your timeship's scanner.” She swiped a claw across the tile in front of her, and a holographic projection sprang from it, showing a petition for access to the vaults. The petition was embossed with Jack's unique seal. He couldn't remember ever filling it out. “However, your timeship's computer banks have no readouts recorded from potential Class V contraband. I have submitted memory chips from the computer banks for the magistrates' consideration.”

“You ran most of your tests in Vault 13-aqua-Q, where the timeline tracer was kept.” Ryoshka swiped her claw across the tile again, showing a map of the Agency's top-secret vaults. “They continued for more than a year. This was no impulsive crime, but carefully planned. Simultaneous with the tests, you put pressure on the security team assigned to the vaults. Four of the guards confess to receiving anonymous bribes. They have been dealt with accordingly before a separate tribunal.” She bared a row of curved teeth. “Those who did not accede to bribery received anonymous blackmail until they agreed to turn a blind eye to movements in and out of Vault 13-aqua-Q keyed with a certain electronic signal. The blackmail and bribes have not been traced back to you, but I believe further evidence will lead the magistrates to conclude that you are responsible. The blackmail is available for reading in the dossier that will be distributed to the assembly once I have completed this presentation.”

“I accuse you second of theft of Class V technology. The timeline tracer designated with code C12V disappeared from Vault 13-aqua-Q on the 15th of Soltra, 5048, at 0215 hours. The tracer could not have been teleported out by anyone who had not already deeply infiltrated the vault security system – the movement of matter from the vault would have triggered an immediate response from the guards on duty.”

“I accuse you finally, and most gravely, of unauthorized use of Class V technology. I invite the magistrates to view this artron energy reading taken from Agent Sel-Ahn upon his arrest.” Ryoshka traced a pattern on the tile with her claw, and Jack's personal timeline as seen from his subjective viewpoint appeared as a glowing line in the air. It began as a faint wisp, until he joined the Time Agency and gained access to temporal technology. It flared into a neon-bright rope, growing thicker with every year, until it frayed into crazy filaments, fine as silk thread. It coalesced back into a rope, then ended.

Jack stared at his frayed timestream. Strange, to see that two-year hole in his mind rendered holographically for the whole tribunal to see. His mouth was dry with fear and anticipation. For over a year, he'd longed for an explanation for why this had happened to him. He was about to find out, but the prospect brought him no satisfaction. Everything he'd worked for – he didn't want it anymore. All he wanted was to be back in the TARDIS, at home with the people he loved.

“The damage to your timestream, as displayed here, is too precise to be the result of a paradox gone awry. Our experts in Internal Affairs have determined that this damage was the result of a timeline tracer – specifically, timeline tracer C12V. Its degradation signature is distinctive. Given the anti-tamper lock on your timestream, I believe the only possible conclusion to be drawn from the evidence before me is that you turned the timeline tracer upon yourself, hoping to alter the flow of your own timestream, though to what end I know not. Your temporal engineering abilities were not up to the challenge, and you misfired, destroying two years of your own timeline. That was when you quit the Agency, raving to anyone who would listen that your superior officers must have tampered with your memory.”

Behind Jack, one of the magistrates spoke. He could not turn to see which; the accused in a Time Agency tribunal was allowed to look upon the accuser, but not upon the magistrates. “And what sentence would you recommend for Agent Sel-Ahn's crimes, Detective-Lieutenant Ryoshka, should he be found guilty?”

“Execution,” Ryoshka replied. “And for his body to be sent to Scientific Research to do with as they will.”

Jack flinched. The insult had to be deliberate. It was 'Shane custom to return the dead to the sea whence all human life once arose. Ryoshka meant to prevent his people from making a martyr of him, or from mourning his death at all. His family would lose yet another son without any ceremony for his passing.

Then again, he reflected, it was only just that Gray's fate should befall the brother who was to blame for it.

* * *

 

They were standing outside the club now, at the entrance to a flyrail station. The Doctor had muttered an explanation to Rose of why they chose this as a meeting spot: it was public enough to make violence a risky option, though the protection of the crowd was as much for Thibadeaux's benefit as theirs. He wasn't stupid enough to meet with possibly dangerous strangers in a place where they could kill him without witnesses. Rose noticed the Doctor surreptitiously aim the sonic screwdriver at the underside of a bench. There was a muffled hiss as something electronic, probably a hidden camera, went dead.

Thibadeaux keyed something into his wrist strap, and the air around them hummed with a strange sort of tension. “Low-level perception filter,” he explained. Right. Rose knew about perception filters from the TARDIS. The passersby would ignore them unless they did something truly out of the ordinary – like drawing a weapon. Thibadeaux sprawled across the bench as if it were a chaise-lounge and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Without preamble, Rose said, “We know about the timeline tracer.”

He didn't try to deny it. He just sneered. “And what are you gonna do about it? You're not Time Agency. They've got a non-extradition pact with local governments. It's no concern of yours.”

“And if we give them evidence?” The Doctor folded her arms across her chest. “Internal Affairs'll be obligated to suspend the ongoing trial and look into it.”

“The charges won't stick,” said Thibadeaux, teeth bared in a wolfish grin. “If you had an airtight case and really wanted my head on the chopping block, you'd've gone to them with it already. Anything less than rock-solid evidence and my family's lawyers'll tear it to shreds.”

The Doctor's eyes glittered like the points of knives. “I don't need to go to the Agency. You're going to turn yourself in.”

Thibadeaux threw his head back against the bench's armrest and laughed mockingly. “And why would I do that? Guilty conscience?”

“If you turn yourself in, the Time Agency will lock you away quietly, to avoid a fuss. There'll be a story or two on the local news service, that's all.” The Doctor smiled coldly. “If you don't, I go to my old friend Mikaëla Thibadeaux of the Shadow Proclamation and bring my evidence to her urgent attention.”

Thibadeaux looked indignant. “You're bluffing! You don't know Mikaëla. You _can't._ ”

“Can't I? Funny how I know about her secluded autumn retreat on Eta Kappa, then. And about her two miniature pegasi, Rho and Kappa. And that she takes nutmeg in her cocoa.” The Doctor's smile had turned smug. “We go back, your great-aunt and I.”

Thibadeaux was sitting up now, all traces of his lazy sprawl gone. “There's no need to tell Mikaëla anything. I'm sure we can work something out.”

“I'm sure we can,” the Doctor agreed. “You turn yourself in, name your accomplices, and tell the magistrates what you did to Shaylin Sel-Ahn. They'll be sure to lighten your sentence if you're willing to name names.”

“The guards I blackmailed will kill me!” Thibadeaux protested. “Those fellows in Internal Security hold a grudge longer than anyone I've ever met. There are ways to get at me, even if I'm in prison. I'd rather face Mikaëla.”

“My partner and I can give you some protection. Shaylin's a friend of ours, and once his name's cleared, he'll have his good standing back in the Agency. I'm sure he can pull some strings and get the guards reassigned to a different HQ.”

Thibadeaux folded his arms. “And why would dear old Shaylin do a thing like that, after what I did to him?”

“You and Shaylin were partners,” the Doctor growled. “That may not mean anything to you, but it does mean something to him. If you know him at all, you'll know he wouldn't just leave you in a cell to die. Maybe to rot for the rest of your worthless life, but not to die for the sake of pointless revenge.”

Thibadeaux's lips curled into a sneer. “Yeah. He always was sentimental that way. No honor among thieves, except when the thief's your partner.”

Rose blurted out, “So he didn't matter to you at all?”

He looked up at her, eyes narrowed. “Got something to say, _girlie_?”

Rose ignored the jab. “He _trusted_ you. You worked together. That doesn't mean a thing to you, does it? How could you do that to your partner?”

“I did trust him,” Thibadeaux snarled. “Let him in on the perfect heist. We would've got even take, one timeline tracer each. Then he turned around and told me he was backing out. Threatened to turn me in if I pulled it off. He would have ratted me out, left me to rot!”

“So that gave you the right to take away two years of his life? You're disgusting!”

“'S not the vibe I was getting from you twenty minutes ago. Didn't think I was disgusting then, did you? Neither did Shaylin. Together, he and I could've done things to you that'd make you beg…”

A blush crawled up Rose's neck. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish's. “You mean – he was – you were –”

“Partners,” he purred. “In every way you can imagine, and then some. Partners in _crime_. He was gagging for a timeline tracer, dreamed of it for years. Almost went through with it, too. Did you think he was an upstanding citizen? That he'd never shack up with the likes of me?”

“Go,” said the Doctor, flatly.

“But your little partner and I are having such a fun chat,” said Thibadeaux, smiling like a shark. He keyed something into his wrist strap. “Aren't we?” His arm lashed out and grabbed Rose's wrist. She shouted and tried to twist free, but her shout was cut off by the most awful sensation of dissolving, like she was melting into the air. The feeling spread from where Thibadeaux's hand clasped her wrist outward to her whole body. Her world turned to liquid, then smoke.

Her body returned to her all at once. It was dizzying, to suddenly see and hear and feel again after nothingness, and she gasped and nearly fell to her knees. Only Thibadeaux's iron-strong grip on her wrist kept her upright. She looked around wildly. She was on a platform covered by what looked like a force-field dome, so high up – or so remote – that she couldn't see anything on the horizon in any direction. Rose and her captor were standing on a sort of pedestal, elevated above the rest of the floor. Thibadeaux let go of her wrist, and she reeled backward off the pedestal into the force field. For a sickening moment, she thought she might fall through the transparent dome, but it held.

“Where are we?” Rose demanded, but by the time the words were out of her mouth, Thibadeaux had disappeared.

* * *

 

With a satisfying _zap_ and a flare of blue-white light, Thibadeaux reappeared on the bench outside the flyrail station.

Without Rose.

The Doctor seized Thibadeaux by the ropes crisscrossing his chest and shook him so hard his teeth rattled. “Where is she?”

Thibadeaux's eyes were wild, darting every which way. “How the hell did you do that?”

“Reversing a Time Agency teleport never takes me more than five seconds. What did you do with her?”

“If you keep this up,” Thibadeaux panted, “the authorities'll want to have a word or two with you.”

Yes. They were in a crowded street. Right. The Doctor relaxed her grip on his ropes, but did not let go. She leaned in close, her nose bare inches from his. “Where. Is. She.”

She could see the calculations going on behind his eyes. He was weighing costs and benefits, and deciding that the costs of withholding information were too high. “The Gallows. She fell off the teleport deck – it's the only way to teleport in or out.”

“The Gallows?” The Doctor had never heard of it, but she was already getting a sick feeling. “What's the Gallows? Is she in danger?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Depends if anyone's in. The Gallows' very existence is classified information. It's the punishment reserved for the Agency's worst offenders. They'll sometimes send you to Scientific Research after you're dead, so they can run experiments on your corpse. If you're very, very unlucky, they'll do research on you while you're still alive. That's what they do in the Gallows. The teleport deck'll have detected an unauthorized biosignature and shut itself down. An intruder warning will show up on the central console – how quickly they respond depends on how understaffed they are. People don't exactly line up for a chance at Gallows duty.”

The Doctor's mind raced. She could force Thibadeaux to help her locate the Gallows and breach its anti-teleport defenses so she could break the TARDIS in and rescue Rose, but that would only delay his confession further. Jack could be on trial already – and Time Agency tribunals were notoriously well-protected against the kind of temporal tampering that could allow the Doctor to go back and rescue both of her companions at the same time. “Shaylin was arrested this morning. How quickly will the Agency bring him to trial?”

“They've probably done it already. When it comes to Internal Affairs, the Agency doesn't dally. He might already be sentenced an' all.”

She had to make a decision, now. Rescue Jack first, or Rose? Who needed her more at this moment? The Doctor could rescue Rose, but that might make her too late to save Jack. He would come first. “Choose,” said the Doctor. “Now. Turn yourself in, or face your great-aunt.”

Thibadeaux let out a long breath. “All right. I'll 'fess up. Just promise you won't tell Mikaëla.” From the calculating look on his face, he was already trying to figure out the fastest way to weasel his way out of jail so he could board the next flight out of the galaxy, in case Mikaëla found out on her own.

“Good choice,” the Doctor said. “Mikaëla Thibadeaux is one of the most frightening women I've ever met, and I've had tea with Margaret Thatcher.” She aimed her sonic screwdriver at Thibadeaux's wrist strap and grabbed him by the forearm. “Next stop, Time Agency, Internal Affairs department.”

The Agent looked furious for a moment – he'd probably planned to key in a different destination and bolt. Not that he would have gotten away with it. The arm of justice was long, but the arm of Mikaëla Thibadeaux was even longer. The sickeningly familiar sensation of teleportation without a capsule seized the Doctor by the stomach.

They rematerialized with a lurch in the teleport deck of Internal Affairs. It was very slick, combining the atmosphere of a modern office and a police station. There were lots of official badges and seals and warnings on the walls, and the counters and desks floated a foot above the ground on antigrav fields, like drops of mercury. The Doctor hauled Thibadeaux off the teleport deck – he wouldn't be able to dematerialize from any other spot – and marched up to the front desk. The agent followed, if not meekly, then at least deferentially.

A guard appeared at the Doctor's elbow. “Excuse me, ma'am. Unauthorized guests not permitted. I must ask you to leave.”

Thibadeaux crooked his thumb toward her. “She's with me.”

The guard swept away with an apologetic nod. The administrative secretary behind the front desk peered at them over her glasses – quite a striking gesture, given that she had four eyes, one pair above the other. “Welcome, Agent Thibadeaux. How may Internal Affairs help you today?”

He cleared his throat. “I'm here to make a confession. Concerning the timeline tracer thefts.”

All four of the secretary's eyes widened. “You mean the crime for which Shaylin Sel-Ahn was just convicted?”

The Doctor's hands clenched on the edge of the front desk. “When? What was the sentence?”

“Execution, ma'am. Slated for 0105 hours in Justice Chamber 2Q. I'm issuing a stay on his sentence right now.” Her pincer-like hands skated across the inner margin of her desk, where the controls for her computer must be.

It was 0059 hours now. “Take me to him.”

“Only family is allowed to attend an execution, ma'am,” said the secretary coolly. “I cannot grant you access.”

“It's not an execution anymore!” she snarled. “He was just six minutes from being killed for a crime he didn't commit. That this criminal piece of scum committed and blamed on him. Either you'll take me there or I'll go myself.”

The secretary tapped out a command, and three Agents surrounded Thibadeaux and cuffed him. “Take him to a junior magistrate who's available to record his confession,” she said, as blithely as if she were asking for a glass of water. They took him away. Thibadeaux scowled at his guards, but did not struggle.

“Follow me,” said the secretary, motioning toward one of the teleport decks. “But if you attempt to disrupt Time Agency procedure – well. On your own head be it.”

* * *

 

Rose took a step back from the force field. She told herself not to look down, but she couldn't help taking a peek. Far, far below, the ground was ravaged and bare of any vegetation, streaked with reddish-grey ooze. There was no other sign of sentient habitation to be seen. She turned around to look at the platform, suspended who-knew-how above the polluted landscape.

The platform seemed a huge labyrinth to Rose, extending further than she could even guess. The drab tiled floor gave the impression of an office building or a hospital, the force field muting the sunlight to the dull fluorescence typical of such places. She stepped up onto the pedestal on which she'd first appeared with the fleeting hope that it might return her to the flyrail station. Nothing happened. She stepped back down.

The wall in front of Rose touched the force field at both its edges, but it had two gaps in it large enough for most of the sentients she'd seen on this planet to pass through. The wall itself seemed to be made of monitors displaying constantly changing data. She couldn't guess at the meaning of most of it, though a few of the screens showed squiggly lines like they had on heart monitors in hospital scenes on the telly. A hospital, then? Why would that slimy git Thibadeaux take her to a hospital, and besides, who would put a hospital in the middle of such an awful place?

Rose peered through one of the gaps in the wall. The place kept going on and on, like a maze. She could either wait here for the Doctor to rescue her, or look around and find a way to rescue herself. If this teleportation were easy to reverse, the Doctor would be here by now. Nothing for it but to explore the place, then, and make her own way. It wouldn't be the first time Rose had gotten herself out of a tight spot, and it wouldn't be the last. She stepped through the gap into the next twist of the maze.

This room was lined with boxes that Rose assumed were freezers, based on the temperature readouts along their top edges and the frost across their glass doors. They were all marked BIOHAZARD. She pressed her face to the door of the first freezer to her left, trying to get a look at what was inside. As soon as she saw, she immediately recoiled and bit back a cry.

The shelves of the freezer were stocked with brains.

Brains of all shapes and sizes, including lots of things that didn't look like brains at all to Rose, but she assumed had to be, since everything else in the freezer was. The next freezer along the wall had all kinds of hearts, and the next some fleshy lumps that could have been livers or kidneys or something. One freezer that really did make Rose almost scream was full of eyes, all glassy and staring.

She steeled herself, then inspected the freezers along the opposite wall. What she saw made her furious. There were people in there, frozen, of all different species, with body parts missing. Some had their rib cages grotesquely opened to reveal all the organs inside; others stared at Rose with empty eye sockets. She had the horrible feeling that they might still be alive, after a fashion. The Doctor had told her about technology that let you revive frozen bodies, if they were preserved just right. Rose would rather die than let herself be used like this.

She couldn't just walk away. She had to do _something_ , but she didn't have the skills to free all the prisoners in this place and get them out alive. Who could she call? Rose took her superphone from her pocket and thumbed through her contact list. Mum and Mickey wouldn't be any help, though it'd be comforting to hear their voices. She couldn't call Jack, much as she might want to; the Time Agency wouldn't be stupid enough to leave him in a prison cell with his wrist strap functioning.

Suddenly, she realized who she could call for help. There was a new contact she'd entered into her phone only a few hours ago, at the Doctor's instruction. It might turn out to be more useful than either of them had imagined. Rose hit SEND, held the phone to her ear, and thought very carefully about what she was going to say to Mikaëla Thibadeaux of the Shadow Proclamation.

* * *

 

His death would be painless, Jack had been told.

He was bound to a chair positioned under a circular pane of glass in the ceiling. The circle would flood his brain with deadly radiation, killing him instantly.

Jack looked over his shoulder at the transparent wall of the execution chamber. Ivory and Collette stood there, hands entwined, watching. He searched, though he wasn't sure what he expected to find there. What he saw was…despair. Ruin. Not even a dream of last-minute rescue. They had given up. The last of their family, destroyed before their eyes.

A painless death. Right. How many minutes did he have left? How long would he have to watch his parents watching him, hopelessness feeding upon itself?

An AI voice issued from the ceiling. “Shaylin Sel-Ahn. There has been a stay issued on your execution, on the grounds of new and complicating evidence.”

Jack sagged in his chair and closed his eyes. He heard rather than saw two robo-wardens march in, then felt their implacable steel grips unbind him and clasp his arms. What did he do this time? What could possibly be worse? Had he altered someone else's timeline too? He'd gotten off lightly with a death sentence. It might be the Gallows next.

He gave one last look to the transparent wall of the chamber. His parents looked numb and confused, clutching at each other as if to timber in a shipwreck. Behind them -

 _No. That isn't possible._

The Doctor stood there, reaching toward the wall of the cell as if her touch could penetrate all the space between them. Her eyes blazed like justice.


	3. Chapter 3

The look on Jack's face when he met the Doctor's eyes almost broke her heart. It was the look of a man wandering through the desert who spotted storm clouds on the horizon: hope and wonder, mixed with a dash of fear. It was a fear the Doctor knew well, having cultivated it for centuries herself – the cold voice of doubt that whispered that no good turn could last, and would be cruelly snatched away just when salvation seemed certain. She reached out and touched the wall of the cell, seized by the sudden desire to break in and take Jack far away from this wretched place. It would be futile, of course; the robo-wardens would overpower her instantly, and besides, Jack was no longer in immediate danger of execution. If Thibadeaux's confession went the way it ought to, he'd be cleared of all charges.

But if Jack were cleared of all charges, and his good standing with the Agency restored, would he want to stay? The Doctor felt her throat tighten unexpectedly at the thought. Not long ago, she would have been relieved to return Jack to his former life. Now, she no longer wanted him anywhere near this den of thieves. He deserved _better_ than them. Not only that, the Doctor wanted to deserve Jack. He was a good man, and he held the Doctor in an esteem so profound that she scarcely felt worthy of the honor. Since when did she turn to Jack for validation?

The Doctor became slowly aware that the two women standing hand in hand in front of her were talking to each other. She recalled that only family was supposed to be here. Who were these women? Mothers? Demi-cousins? Sex-swapped progenitor clones? Human familial relationships could be byzantine in the 51st century.

The shorter of the two women shook her head a little, her silver-streaked curls bouncing with the motion. “I knew he had a backup plan. He always had – ” Her nose wrinkled. “Friends. You know the sort. It was all theatrics, just like I said.”

“I didn't believe it, but there you are,” said the taller woman, pressing her lips into a hard line. “He told me that he didn't know anyone who could help us, but he manages to get himself out of trouble like a sandworm wriggling out of a trap. I thought he cared about our family, but in the end, it's all about number one.”

“Maybe he'll come back. Maybe he does want the best for us, after all. But…” The shorter woman shook her head again. “It's too much to hope for. We can't expect miracles, not from him. I suppose the blame lies with us, in the end. It's the way we brought him up.”

The Doctor was seized by a fury so intense she could scarcely breathe. Jack had almost been executed for a crime he didn't commit, right before their eyes. He had been willing to give his life to correct his own mistakes. More than that, she had seen him risk his life to correct other people's mistakes. How dare they not believe in him? How could his own family not see what was now so clear to her?

“You don't know what you're talking about,” the Doctor said. Her voice rasped like a sword drawn from its scabbard. Both women turned around to face her, eyes wide. “That man just faced down death with no hope of rescue. He's brave and good and he doesn't deserve to die. I don't care how closely related you are to him. If you don't see the goodness in him, then you don't know him at all.”

“You're the one who doesn't know what she's talking about,” the taller woman snarled. She was of a height with the Doctor, though she still somehow had to look up to meet the Doctor's eyes. “He's not your son. You don't know what it's like to see your children die and know that it's your fault.”

“Yes. I. Do.” The Doctor let her words fall like anvils. “And if there were anyone in my family still alive – even a demi-cousin twice-removed – I would show him more respect than you just showed your son if he were half the man I know your son to be.”

“Your family, perhaps,” the smaller woman said. “But Nazaire is ours.”

 _Nazaire might be your family,_ the Doctor thought ferociously, _but Jack is mine._ She wanted to defend him. She wanted him to have the loving family he deserved. But she was part of events now, and time was slipping away. “He's going to have the chance to see you again. Soon,” the Doctor promised. “You almost lost him today. Consider yourselves lucky.”

Jack's mothers said nothing, but the bleakness in their eyes told the Doctor that they didn't consider themselves lucky at all. There was something there that she didn't yet understand, and wouldn't until she got to have a long talk with Jack. Perhaps she had judged them too soon.

But there was no time for regrets now. She was going to get Jack and Rose back. In that order.

She could only hope that Rose had learned enough to stand on her own until the Doctor and Jack came to her rescue.

  


  


* * *

 

“You have reached the office of Dame Thibadeaux,” said a cool, professional voice. “How may I help you?”

Rose suppressed a groan. Just what she needed right now: a _secretary_. “I've got to speak to her right away. It's urgent.”

“Dame Thibadeaux has many urgent matters to attend to,” replied the secretary in bored cadences. “Would you like to make an appoi– ”

“Tell her it's a friend of the Doctor's who needs her help. She'll want to hear this, _trust_ me.”

The secretary sighed. “One moment, please.” The music the phone blared tinnily at Rose while she was placed on hold was nothing like any she'd heard before, but it was just as irritating as the music she'd heard on automated phone systems back on 21st century Earth. Some things never changed.

The music cut out, and a confident alto voice said, “Thibadeaux speaking. How may I help you?” Her offer of help sounded far more genuine than than the secretary's.

“My name is Rose Tyler. The Doctor and I and a friend of ours are on Outer Beta Aquarii.” She considered for a moment, then decided that telling Mikaëla about her kidnapping wouldn't violate the terms of the Doctor's agreement with Makarios, and besides, the smarmy bastard could bloody well learn to take responsibility for his own actions. “Your great-nephew Makarios just kidnapped me and left me in the most awful place I've ever seen.”

Rose could hear Mikaëla hiss out a breath between clenched teeth. “Oh, Makarios. Foolish boy. I feared he might come to this.” She sounded almost sad. It wasn't at all what Rose had expected from a woman who scared the rogue Time Agent so much. “Where are you, Dame Tyler?”

“I'm not sure. It's on this platform covered by a force dome, floating above this horrible polluted desert. It's about midmorning. I can send you pictures.” Rose pointed the camera lens on her phone toward the translucent curve of the force field and took about twenty pictures. The more information she could give Mikaëla, the better. “Then there's…” Words failed Rose as she tried to summon up a description of the medical tortures she'd seen. “I'll show you.” She took another series of pictures of the freezers, pressing the phone's lens against the frosted doors.

After a pause, Mikaëla spoke. Her voice was even, but Rose could feel the anger rippling beneath. “We've suspected for years that the Time Agency might be hiding such a facility. The Scientific Research department was always too tight-lipped about their R&D methods, and the rumors…prisoners made to disappear without a formal death sentence…”

Rose shivered. Jack might have ended up here. Might still end up here, if Mikaëla's great-nephew didn't confess. If the Time Agency didn't accept his testimony. So many ifs.

“The Time Agency is a signatory of the Shadow Proclamation. What you have just shown me is a violation of Article 56. You have just done me, the Shadow Proclamation, and the galaxy a great service, Dame Tyler.”

“Please, call me Rose. A friend of the Doctor's is a friend of mine.”

“Then call me Mikaëla. I'm coming for you with a team of Enforcers, Rose, as soon as we've triangulated your location based on the data you've provided me. I'm sorry, but I don't know how long it will take. Keep well until then. I apologize for my wayward great-nephew. It's past time that I provide him a proper education.” Beneath the word education was the first stirring of what Rose suspected might inspire such awe toward Mikaëla. The word wasn't sinister, not quite, but it held promises backed by iron conviction.

“Thank you, Mikaëla.” Rose swallowed. “And please hurry.”

A moment after Rose ended the call, she heard distant footsteps. She looked around the room and thought quickly. Not this soon, not now! Where could she hide? The last freezer before the platform met the forcefield had an opaque door, she noticed. It wasn't the least comfortable place she'd ever hidden in, and it would give her some protection, but it still wasn't going to be fun waiting for rescue in there. She steeled herself and opened the freezer door. It was full of frozen fetuses in transparent containers. Rose felt a shudder that had nothing to do with cold, transferred the containers to another freezer, and crawled in. The door shut, and her world was dark and frozen and small.

Rose sent a text message to Mikaëla, her thumbs already growing clumsy with the cold. _I'm hiding in Freezer 17. Good luck._

She leaned her head against the back of the freezer and hoped Mikaëla would find her before the Time Agents did.

* * *

This cell was lower-security than the first; the door wasn't deadlocked. It even had windows, though Jack suspected the views was computer-generated. He couldn't understand it. Why would the Agency put a prisoner slated for death or the Gallows in anything less than a max-security cell? He'd asked the robo-warden what was going on, and it had primly replied that Internal Affairs had new and complicating evidence and that the magistrates were reconsidering his case. His bail was set at 950,000 credits according to the robo-warden, which was technically an improvement over no bail at all, though it made no real difference. His parents couldn't afford to post bail that high, and even if they could, he had the sinking feeling that they might refuse to do it anyway.

Jack lay on his cot, staring at the ceiling. The Doctor had something to do with this. Of that there could be no doubt. What had the Doctor gone and done? Did she learn of his crimes and, enraged, set out to find her own evidence of his guilt? But he was already sentenced to death in any case, and he knew she wouldn't approve of the Time Agency's worst sentence of all. She usually didn't approve of the death penalty either, for that matter. Could she have made a plea to _lighten_ his sentence? It seemed too much to hope for, but he couldn't imagine her doing anything else, especially if Rose had anything to say about it. She wouldn't want to see Jack executed.

Perhaps he'd be consigned to a jail cell much like this one for the rest of his days, but at least he'd get a chance to speak to his parents once again – and maybe even to the Doctor and Rose. That thought made even a life in prison seem bearable.

“Shaylin Sel-Ahn, your bail has been posted,” announced the robo-warden. “Please step toward the door to have a probationary chip implanted in your wrist until the magistrates are done re-examining your case file.”

Jack felt a fierce surge of hope rise in his chest, but hesitated before complying. What if it was a trap? Someone with a personal vendetta against him luring him out of jail to a place where he could be conveniently murdered? He decided it was a risk worth taking. He didn't like the idea of having a Time Agency chip implanted in his body, but at this point, they practically owned him anyway. He stepped up to the door, and a huge needle appeared from a notch in its surface and jabbed him in the wrist. He winced at the pain, but the wound sealed up without bleeding. The door opened, and the Doctor was waiting for him on the other side.

He stood there, mouth hanging slack a little, not knowing what to do or say. For a moment, the Doctor seemed stricken by the same paralysis. Then she reached out and clasped him by the shoulder. Their eyes met. Jack hadn't felt scrutinized so closely since the Doctor had looked him in the eye and told him that his greed would bring about the end of human history.

“I owe you an apology,” she said. “And I'll give it to you, in full. But it'll have to wait. Rose is in danger. I need your help.”

There were all kinds of things Jack wanted to say: _I'm the one who owes you, and it's a lot more than an apology_ or _Thank you for saving me, again_ or _I spent at least half of this nightmare thinking of you and Rose and everything we've done together_. Instead, he just said, “What can I do?”

“Walk with me.” The Doctor took him by the hand and led him out of the prison. He didn't even notice the endless security protocols. The firm heat of the Doctor's hand around his spread warmth up his arm and through his whole body. He'd seen the Doctor take Rose by the hand, just like this, dozens of times. It was such a simple gesture, but he'd always suspected it might have a deeper meaning when the Doctor did it. He'd never imagined that he might experience that for himself. Jack knew what it meant, now. It wasn't a protective or possessive gesture. It meant _this is my world, and you can be a part of it._

The stained-glass mosaics of Villa della Costa were beautiful even in the dead of night. Inner Beta Aquarii, O.B.A.'s sister planet and Jack's home, dominated the sky, crowding out all three of O.B.A.'s moons. I.B.A. shone rust-coloured light on the mosaics, turning shards of green to brown and the red to a fierce glow. Jack's planet was mostly waterless, a world of red desert, but for a few scattered seas. Wisps of cloud obscured the sea along whose shores Jack grew up, on a little peninsula jutting out into the water. The sight of his home planet made the beauty of the city ring hollow. From what he'd seen, his people wouldn't be let past the enameled doors of these buildings.

Jack let the Doctor guide him through the empty plaza to the TARDIS, even though he'd spent enough time in his prison cell imagining it that he could hardly have forgotten where it was. Before the Doctor could open the door, though, he found himself blurting out the question that had been plaguing him ever since the Doctor freed him from the Time Agency's prison.

“Why do you trust me?” he said.

The Doctor stared at him and blinked, once.

“Why do you trust me?” he repeated. “You wouldn't bring me along to rescue Rose if you didn't. You know I stole the timeline tracer. My family doesn't trust me. I don't trust myself. Why do you?”

“You didn't steal the timeline tracer, Jack,” the Doctor said. “Your former partner, Makarios Thibadeaux, did. He erased your memories and pinned the blame on you.”

“But…” But he'd promised his parents he would. _They_ thought he had. They were _proud_ of him for it. Could they have been mistaken? Did he realize his mistake and go back on his promise to them? “How do you know?”

“I knew you couldn't've done it, so Rose and I set out to find the person who did. It was Thibadeaux. We got him to confess. You'll be cleared of all charges soon enough.” Her eyes narrowed with remembered anger. “It was him who put Rose in danger. And the one who made those two years of yours disappear. I'm sorry.”

A curious lightness was spreading through Jack's body, a burden lifted that had been weighing invisibly behind his ribcage. “But you couldn't have known for sure that I didn't do it, before you went after Makarios. How did you know?”

“I didn't.” The Doctor's mouth didn't smile, but her eyes did. “I made a leap of faith. That's what trust is.”

Jack didn't know what to say to that, so he didn't say anything at all.

“You told me about the missing two years, but I didn't do anything about it,” the Doctor said, her expression firming into seriousness. The words clearly weren't coming easily to her. “I thought it was your fault. Paradox damage. Another mistake that you didn't fix in time. I was wrong. If I'd done something sooner, I could've spared you all this. And for that, I couldn't be more sorry. It won't happen again, Jack. I trust you.” She reached into her pocket, never looking away from his face, then pressed his hand between hers.

He felt something hard and metallic bite into his palm. At first, he didn't understand what it was, what it _meant_. When he realized that he was holding a key, he had to lean against the TARDIS to keep from sinking to his knees. He looked at the Doctor and felt like everything in his heart was bleeding out from his eyes.

“Whatever it is you want to say, save it for later,” she said, gently. “He took her to the Gallows. I can't find her in time unless you help me out.”

Trust, Jack found, was a burden entirely different from guilt. Instead of making every thought and movement unbearable with its weight, it was like gravity: it made him remember which way was up. He slid his key into the lock, relishing the rasp of the metal teeth and the smooth turn of the lock's tumblers. The first fall of orange-green light from the console room warmed him more than sunlight.

Jack held the door open and gestured for the Doctor to go in first. “After you,” he said.

The Doctor looked like she might protest, but she must have recognized that letting her go first meant something to Jack besides self-deprecation, because she nodded fractionally and stepped across the threshold. He followed her.

As soon as he closed the TARDIS door behind him, the chip in Jack's wrist flared mauve. A moment later, a horrible metallic scream overloaded his brain with painful noise, drowning out any other sound. His vision blurred around the edges; he could only just make out the Doctor snarling a curse and aiming her sonic screwdriver at the chip with one arm and catching him with her other as his legs buckled.

The noise cut out as suddenly as it had begun. Jack realized that the Doctor had laid him out on the floor, the back of his head propped up against the solid weight of her torso. “The Time Agency can talk all they like about how modern and enlightened they are. They're stuck in the Dark Ages, every one of them,” she said, her voice tempered with quiet anger. He could feel the vibrations in her chest as she spoke.

“You can put me down if you want,” Jack mumbled. She was warmer than he would have thought from how cool her hands were. “I'll be fine.”

“I don't want,” said the Doctor in a tone of voice that brooked no argument. “We'll wait until you can stand up properly. Then we'll go find Rose.”

It should have made him feel weak, being supported like this. He'd been hurt far worse than this in the Time Agency, and before that, the war. He always tried to get out of sickbay at the first opportunity and never took painkillers unless he had no choice. After all, there were other soldiers who probably needed them more than he did. But the Doctor had decided that he needed this, and that was a decision that was worth putting in her hands. If the Doctor held him, it wasn't because she thought he was weak. It was because she thought he was strong enough to let himself be vulnerable with her. It was a kind of strength he hadn't even known was in him.

* * *

 

Rose wished for the umpteenth time that she'd brought a jacket.

She had her hands stuffed in the pockets of her hoodie, the hood up over her hair, and her socks pulled up as high as they would go. Still, she had lost all feeling in her fingers, toes, and the tip of her nose. She was beginning to worry about frostbite. The Doctor had taught her the signs: first itching and pain, then ugly discolored patches appearing on her skin. Rose looked at her hands. They were the same color as they had always been. It didn't stop her from worrying. If frostbite didn't get her first, then the Time Agency might. And what if the Doctor or Mikaëla got to her in time, only to tell her that it was too late for Jack? She'd known the bloke for a few weeks at most, but the thought of losing him made a gap open in her chest, into which she could fall and fall before she ever reached the bottom.

There was a puff of air, suddenly, as the seal around the freezer door broke. Light spilled in, made waxy and dull by the force dome. The being outside was definitely not the Doctor or Mikaëla. It was wearing a lab coat, or as close to one as a garment made for someone with eight limbs could get. When it saw Rose, a bump on its head flared into brilliant white bioluminescence, a beacon that anyone nearby could hardly fail to notice. Then a hand reached up from behind it, grabbed it by a horn at the base of its neck, and squeezed. The Time Agency scientist convulsed, then the bump on its head went dark and it sagged to the floor.

Behind it stood a short, broad-shouldered woman with long silver hair threaded into many small braids. She had deep golden skin, almond-shaped blue eyes with heavy creases at their corners, and stark cheekbones. Her right ear had five earrings along its edge, while her left ear had none, and she wore calf-high boots, baggy shorts, and a sleeveless white shirt with a collar so high it nearly touched her chin.

“Why a kevla-Kan in a top-secret Time Agency facility would walk around with its rear horn exposed, I cannot fathom,” she said, with a tone of mild reproach. “Anybody could just walk up from behind and cut off its air supply. I hope it learns something from this experience.”

Rose just stared.

“Oh, not to worry, Rose! It's just metabolically dormant for now. The gas concentrations in its tissues will restabilize soon enough.” Five people who looked like cats on two legs came up behind her. “My lads will round everyone up until the Shadow Proclamation has decided upon the appropriate disciplinary measures. They won't be harming anyone else. Could you take this kevla-Kan to the teleport deck, please, lads? Dame Tyler needs to get out of that freezer, she looks like she's in quite a state.”

One of the cat-people, whose uniform had green wavy lines on it, nodded to the other four. They proceeded into the next room, which Rose had not dared to explore, while Green-Waves picked up the unconscious form of the Time Agency scientist and hauled it to the edge of the platform, where Rose had first been taken. The elder woman took Rose by the hand and helped her out of the freezer, dusting flakes of ice from her clothes.

“It's a pleasure to meet you at last, Rose Tyler,” she said, raising Rose's hand to her lips for a light kiss. “Mikaëla Thibadeaux, at your service.”

“Thank you, Mikaëla,” Rose managed to say.

“Oh no, all the thanks goes to you, Rose! We've been trying to pin charges of Article 56 violations on the Time Agency for decades now. Most people would have panicked and been immediately captured, in your place. Instead, you saved not only yourself, but all the people who are suffering and who might have suffered at the hands of these torturers.”

Rose didn't think she deserved that much credit – all she did was make a phone call – but she didn't bother to protest. “What are you going to do? I mean, there's the people who worked here, but then there's the people who gave the orders to have this place built, and the judges who sent all the prisoners here for their sick idea of punishment.”

Mikaëla shrugged. “Each signatory to the Shadow Proclamation has a different notion of what justice is. What we have done is to classify all these justice systems into fifteen categories. We have people assigned to represent each of these viewpoints. We give these questions out to teams of fifteen, who must debate until they reach a consensus. Then we act based on the teams' decisions.”

Rose imagined arguing with fourteen people as smart and stubborn as Jack or the Doctor, each with a different opinion. “Blimey. That must be… really difficult.”

“These are matters of life or death. They _ought_ to be difficult. By comparison, this part,” Mikaëla said, gesturing all around her, “is easy. Break out the imprisoned, do whatever we can for them. This is why I chose to work for Enforcement, not Deliberation.”

The air began to stir around them, as if by a sudden breeze, though of course the force field meant that was impossible. Rose heard the sound that she'd spent all that time in the freezer longing to hear, the rasping and groaning that had become dearer than music to her ears.

Mikaëla recognized it too. She tilted her head back a little, closed her eyes, and smiled, the wind from the TARDIS' materialization making her braids flutter around her face.

After a moment, the TARDIS door opened, and the Doctor's head peered out. “Rose!”

“Yes, Doctor, I'm fine,” said Rose, smiling. “Though if you'd come a few minutes earlier, you could've been the dashing lady knight who came to my rescue.”

“I didn't know I had so much competition in the lady knight business,” the Doctor said with a chagrined expression. “Who – Mikaëla?”

Mikaëla raised an eyebrow. “Dame Doctor.”

“I – I'm sorry – what are you – I didn't know…”

Jack appeared in the TARDIS doorway beside the Doctor, looking at her with a mixture of amusement and awe. “Do my ears deceive me? You have a _history_ with Mikaëla Thibadeaux?”

“If by history you mean that the last time I saw madame Doctor, she slammed a door in my face, then yes,” said Mikaëla.

“I thought you were friends!” Rose protested.

“We are,” said Mikaëla. “Or at least, I am hers.”

Everyone looked at the Doctor, except for Green-Waves, who had moved the unconscious kevla-Kan and was now standing at attention, trying not to look perturbed by the TARDIS' sudden appearance.

“You know I'm your friend, Mikaëla!” the Doctor said. “I just objected strongly to being dumped in a bath of frozen katamarite. Most would've done more than slam a door, under the circumstances.”

“What's katamarite?” Rose wondered.

“That's a rare kind of toxin, absorbed through the skin,” said Jack. “It temporarily suppresses telepathy.”

“It was medically necessary, Doctor, and you know it. I certainly didn't hear you object after the first five seconds.”

“All right, fine, my telepathic senses may have been overloading at the time, but then you wouldn't give me my clothes back!”

“You refused to wear anything but those rags you were wearing when you first showed up, and I couldn't let you wear them. They were practically radioactive. Then I offered you food and a haircut, because you looked like a scarecrow and you needed to stop feeling sorry for yourself and let yourself live.”

Finally, the Doctor said, grudgingly, “S'pose you're right. What you did helped me put my head back on straight.” She paused. “More or less.”

“Apology accepted.” Before Rose could ask what on earth they were talking about, Mikaëla continued, “Now, Dame Doctor, let's not be discourteous. You must introduce me to your handsome young friend.” Jack positively preened at the attention, but his pride turned visibly sour when she added, “I'm sure I recognize him from somewhere, but I just can't place it.”

“This is Captain Jack Harkness,” said the Doctor, pulling him by the shoulder out of the TARDIS doorway and toward Mikaëla, “though you may know him as Captain Shaylin Sel-Ahn.”

“Ah, Captain Sel-Ahn, of course! You were partnered with my wayward great-nephew for five years. You must have the goodwill of a prophet to manage him for so long. I always thought the Time Agency was exactly the wrong career for Makarios, but what with the family pressure, and the lure of power…” She tutted and shook her head, then took Jack's hand to kiss. “It's a pleasure, Captain.”

Rose exchanged sidelong glances with Jack and the Doctor. Mikaëla must not have known about Jack's arrest. She wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not.

“Thank you, Dame Thibadeaux,” Jack said weakly. He sounded like someone who had just met the Prime Minister, realized that his flies were unzipped, and was desperately hoping no one would find out. Not that Jack would care if his flies were unzipped, no matter who he had just met.

All of this did not escape Mikaëla's notice. “Speaking of Makarios, where is the lad? I'd like to have a word with him.”

Rose exchanged another set of looks with the Doctor and Jack. They'd promised Makarios that they wouldn't tell Mikaëla about his crimes. But then again, what was a promise worth to a lowlife like him? He'd almost gotten her and Jack both killed, and stolen a timeline tracer, with which he had done terrible damage and could have done even worse.

“You promised him not to tell me, didn't you. Yes, that's a threat that would keep him in line. Very shrewd of you, Dame Doctor.” She didn't sound angry, just determined. Calculating. “Well, you don't have to tell me. I can find him on my own. Then no one could say that you'd reneged on your agreement.”

Rose stood there, uncertain. She liked Mikaëla, but she frightened Rose a little. Jack and the Doctor seemed similarly conflicted.

“Well, go on,” said Mikaëla. “Sail away on your timeship. Stumbling across a top-secret high-tech Time Agency torture chamber is your job. Mopping it up is mine. I can take it from here.”

Somewhere in the labyrinth of the platform, there was a faint yelp and the sound of something shattering. Mikaëla's people had taken the Time Agency by surprise, Rose thought with grim satisfaction.

“Thank you, Mikaëla,” said the Doctor. “If something had happened to Rose, I don't know what I would've done. I'm sure you'll do a good job bringing all this to rights.”

“No need to thank me. Rose rescued herself. I should think you'd have realized by now that it's a habit of hers. I can already tell.” Mikaëla got down on one knee to kiss the Doctor's hand, her lips lingering longer than they had on Rose's or Jack's. She looked up at the Doctor through her eyelashes. “I don't suppose there's a chance of getting you to promise me you'll visit?”

The Doctor placed two fingers under Mikaëla's chin and gently tilted her face upward. “No, there's not. But I might just run into you again. You never know.”

Rose felt her cheeks grow warm. She was _not_ envious of Mikaëla. Watching the Doctor flirt was _embarrassing_ , that was all. Like watching an eccentric schoolteacher try to flirt. She would feel exactly the same way if the Doctor were flirting with her or Jack instead.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Jack mouthing, _You too, huh?_ She tried to look indignant, but she only blushed pinker.

“It was an honor to meet you, Dame Thibadeaux,” said Jack, perhaps a little louder than necessary.

“Yeah. So long, Mikaëla,” said Rose. “Good luck.” They all stepped through the TARDIS door, then closed it. As soon as the door was completely shut, Rose said, “What's she going to do to Makarios when she finds him?”

“Anything she wants,” said Jack, his voice and body animating into what Rose thought of as his storytelling mode. “Makarios told me that she underwent intensive gene therapy to become the most powerful and subtle human telepath of her time. She can do psychografts using her mind alone. Complete personality transplant, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “The Doctor told me how you worked over Makarios. No wonder he chose prison over her. I'd rather that than have a completely different person walking around in my body, with everything I am just… gone.”

“That's not true, lad,” said the Doctor. “Mikaëla's got a reputation, especially within her own family, but she's nothing more than a minor telepathic talent. She can completely change your personality around – trust me – but that's just because she's Mikaëla, not because she's some telepathic mastermind. She gets her hooks in you, and after she's done you don't want to be who you were anymore. And she doesn't do it to just anyone – just those who she thinks need some serious readjusting.”

“And she did it to you,” said Rose. “After the war with the Daleks.”

There were two simultaneous intakes of breath. Jack stared at the Doctor; the Doctor stared at Rose.

“How did you know? Did Mikaëla tell you?” demanded the Doctor.

“The Last Great Time War is _real_?” cried Jack.

“I figured it out,” Rose said. “You were a right mess when I first met you – sorry, Doctor – but you weren't stark raving mad. Makes sense that someone helped you put the pieces back together, after.”

The Doctor leaned back against one of the coral struts and closed her eyes. “You're right, Rose. And yes, Jack, the Last Great Time War is real, and I'm its only survivor.”

Jack sat down on the grating, possibly because he was too overwhelmed to continue standing.

“What happened with Mikaëla?” asked Rose, quietly.

The Doctor opened her eyes and looked at Rose. She was pleading with her, silently, not to ask. Rose held firm. The Doctor's expression became pained. “I'll tell you. Both of you. Suppose you ought to know that you've got less reason to trust me than I had to trust Jack. But first things first.” She knelt on the grating so that she was near eye level with Jack. “How would you like to visit your family?"


	4. Chapter 4

For a moment, Jack couldn't think of how the Doctor knew his family. But then he remembered her unexpected appearance at what had nearly been his execution. Rose, though, looked confused.

“I met them today,” the Doctor explained, “while you were, ah…”

“Sitting in a freezer,” Rose finished.

“Right.” She looked briefly chagrined, then moved on. “They said things about you, Jack, that weren't kind. I lost my temper. They thought you stole the timeline tracer.”

“That's because I promised them I would.”

Rose and the Doctor stared at him.

Jack sighed. “Can we go to the garden room? It'll be easier, there.”

The Doctor gave him a thoughtful look. “The TARDIS showed you the garden room?”

He nodded. “My first night here. Couldn't sleep. Kept thinking about what I'd done. I wandered the corridors, and I found it by accident. Or at least, I thought it was an accident at the time. It was a place where I could just… be.”

“All right, then.” The Doctor stood, helped Jack to his feet, and led him and Rose by the hand to the garden room. The grass was reddish, the “sky” gold and cloudless. A bed of daisies stirred in a breeze that seemed to be without source. The Doctor knelt in the grass, Rose sat cross-legged, and Jack lay on his side, propping himself up on one arm. None of them said anything for a while.

“I thought I did it,” Jack said, finally. “I could've done anything during those two years. Afterward, I became a criminal. Wasn't too much of a stretch to think I might have been a criminal then, too. And besides…” He swallowed. This was the hard part, where each word would feel like it had been wrenched from him with a crowbar. This was the part he didn't want to admit even to himself. “I'd dreamed of getting a timeline tracer. Just fantasized about it, never acted on it. I made a terrible mistake when I was a kid, and I've spent most of my life wishing I could go back and change it.”

Rose reached out a hand. “Do you want…?”

Did he want Rose to hold his hand while he relived a memory of letting go of the hand of someone he'd sworn to protect? “No,” said Jack. “Not right now. Though I appreciate the offer.”

Rose seemed to accept this, and let her hand fall to the reddish grass. Jack was grateful. If she had been hurt by his refusal, it would have only made this confession harder. Besides, he didn't want her to feel shy about offering touch again later, when he was ready to say yes. “When I was fourteen, an invasion force called the Hive invaded my planet, Inner Beta Aquarii, sister planet to where we just were. I lived in this little place called the Boeshane Peninsula. It was hit the hardest because it was one of the most densely-populated places on I.B.A. Most of the planet is desert, but the Boe is right on the water.” He laughed bitterly. “When the invasion force hit the Boe, my madrina was on O.B.A., trying to get help, but the rest of us were right in the line of fire.”

He was about to continue, but he saw Rose's confusion and stopped to explain. It was a nice break from the story, anyway. “My father and mother married each other first, and Ivory joined the marriage later on, after they had me. That's why she's called my madrina – our relationship isn't genetic.”

He returned to the story, quickly, before he could lose his nerve. “My father told me to look after my little brother while he went to help my mother.” It was hard to find the words to describe this part, and not only because it hurt so much. His memories were all jumbled images, a chaos so total that it nauseated him just to try to sort through it. He had to pause every few words to gather himself. “We were running – I told him I wouldn't let go of him – but he, he got lost, somehow. I don't know. It all happened so fast. I hid, and prayed he'd made it to safety too. But when I finally got home, my father was dead, and Gray was gone. I've searched for him ever since, and never found a trace. I thought if I had a timeline tracer, I could make it go differently, but I wasn't foolish enough to try to actually steal one myself.”

“Thibadeaux said that he came up with the idea for the heist and offered to let you in on it,” the Doctor supplied.

“Yeah. I guess I must've seen the opportunity to get one and promised my parents I would. It was a chance to redeem myself, to undo what I'd done. And even though what I wanted to do was wrong, I still feel bad for breaking my promise to them. They had one last hope of seeing Gray again, and I took it away from them.”

The Doctor said nothing. She looked like she might be somewhere else, behind her eyes. If she really was the only survivor of the Last Great Time War, then she must have made much greater sacrifices than he had to preserve the integrity of Time. It was a comfort to know they shared that pain, but it was also quietly devastating to see her like this. The Doctor never wore her heart on her sleeve, but her emotions still animated her in their own subtle ways. Now, as Jack's memories brought back her own, it was as if the Doctor had disappeared into some black hole inside herself.

“I think you were really brave,” said Rose. “I know you don't remember it, but it's always harder to choose a lot of lives over one when it means losing someone you love. I know how that feels.”

Jack stared at her. He could understand why the Doctor might empathize with what he was going through, but Rose? Rose, who had never known the black desperation of war, who always seemed to know what was right, had gone through this same trial of guilt and self-recrimination?

“Stop looking at me like that, Jack, you look like a kid who just found out the Easter Bunny's not real. You can't think of me like I'm – like some kind of saint. My dad was supposed to die when I was a baby. I went back and changed that, and it was almost the end of the world.”

“But you couldn't have known,” Jack countered. “I should have known better. I'd been trained in the Time Agency Academy.”

“And you did. You realized it was wrong before it was too late.”

“I shouldn't have tried to do it in the first place! I shouldn't have given my parents false hope. They'd have been better off just accepting that Gray was lost forever.”

“He's your brother, Jack,” said Rose. “It's different with family. You can't think the same way.”

“I'd have done the same for you or the Doctor,” said Jack, the words slipping out before he even realized what they meant. “Maybe I'd have realized that it was stupid and wrong, but if I lost one of you, I'd do anything to get you back. You're not family. I've only known you for – what, less than a month linear? What does that say about me, that I'd do that for people I've just met?”

Rose's eyes were huge, and she looked like she might be holding back tears. The Doctor said, “I haven't done anything to deserve that.” She swallowed, and her eyes, too, were a little too bright. “But I think it says you've a good heart, Captain Jack Harkness.”

Jack's throat constricted. The Doctor had never called him Captain before, or at least never without a sneer – she'd always said he'd never earned the title. Now, of course, she knew he had. But it was more than that. The Doctor wouldn't care if the Time Agency thought he was worthy of captaincy. She wouldn't care no matter what titles he'd earned or honors he'd won. She measured by her own standard.

“It just isn't fair,” he managed to say. “I made the right choice, the _moral_ choice, for once in my life. So why do I feel like crap?”

“Only monsters never feel guilt, Jack.” The Doctor snorted, but there was no real humor in it. “I saved the universe from being overrun by the Daleks and I ended up catatonic in Mikaëla's backyard.”

Rose looked wide-eyed and a little frightened, which made Jack wonder just how much she knew about the Doctor's part in the Last Great Time War. Whatever that knowledge was, he wished she didn't have to bear the burden of it. “How did she know what to do with you? You just appeared there, and you were – I mean, I can't _imagine_ – ”

“There's no way she couldn't've known what was happening,” said the Doctor, her voice a monotone. “After the end, once my body and the TARDIS had repaired themselves, I couldn't go anywhere near sentient life forms. Would've hurt too much. I wandered through empty places – just beyond the event horizons of black holes, time pockets a second out of sync with the rest of the universe, anywhere that wasn't within a thousand light-years of sentient life. My brain had just healed itself, and staying away from thinking beings kept my telepathic senses dormant.” She tapped her temple. “Then I crash-landed right in the middle of Camp Thibadeaux, Mikaëla's autumn retreat on Eta Kappa. Or that's what she calls it, any road, but it's more like a miniature fortress. Mikaëla's idea of a vacation is to keep on doing her work, but with nicer scenery. Don't think it was an accident, though, looking back. The TARDIS must've been sick of me by then.”

“I'd met Mikaëla a few times before, on Shadow Proclamation business. We were on good terms, I suppose – of which I'm glad, because otherwise, I don't know what she'd've done with me. I fell out of the TARDIS, and my telepathy just went out of control. Mikaëla's a fair telepath herself; she didn't even need to touch me to see what was happening. It was the psychic equivalent of having someone bleed to death at her feet.”

Jack winced. How had it felt for the Doctor, to be psychically bleeding to death in front of someone he'd met only a few times and probably barely trusted?

“She put me in a room shielded against telepathic incursion, but that didn't help. It wasn't what my telepathy was picking up on that made me that way. It was what I _wasn't_ sensing. No Time Lords anywhere. Emptiness.” She tapped her temple again.

Jack inclined his head in acknowledgment. He understood that, at least a little. When he'd first woken up with two years of his memory missing, he'd gone a little crazy. He'd torn up his quarters, ransacking everything he had for some trace of the two years he'd just lived. There had been changes and new belongings, of course, but they'd meant nothing, as if they'd been put there by a stranger. He hadn't known who he was anymore.

The Doctor gave a wry smile. “That's when she tried the frozen katamarite. That gave me time to put my mind back together, but it didn't mean I was thinking clearly. I hadn't changed out of the clothes I'd been wearing when the war ended. I wanted to remind myself. Punish myself, really. That's why I wouldn't cut my hair or eat anything more than the bare minimum to stay alive. I thought it was what I deserved. Mikaëla disagreed. She threw out my old rags and cut my hair while I was sleeping. I didn't want to be her charity case and got angry. Slammed the door in her face and never looked back. I wasn't ready to be traveling on my own, not really, but at least I was letting myself live.”

“And that's when you met Rose,” Jack said.

“That's when I met Rose.”

Rose smiled. She looked almost embarrassed by the note in the Doctor's voice. Jack would have felt the same if the Doctor had spoken of him that way, he was sure. He suddenly felt certain that he wasn't wrong to place the Doctor and Rose in the same esteem as his family. This was how families were supposed to be. They saw the best in each other, the hidden goodness that most people never even saw in themselves. Ivory and Collette only saw the worst in Jack. While the Doctor and Rose had forgiven him for his terrible mistake with the Chula ambulance in less than a month, his parents still hadn't forgiven him all these years later for a mistake he'd made as a child. The knowledge gave him the strength he needed to face them again.

“I want to see them,” Jack said. “They never got the chance to watch me grow up. I was only fifteen when I joined the military, and that's all they really know of me. I want to give them a chance to see who I've become. Maybe they still won't see it, but I have to try.”

“All right then,” the Doctor said. “But we've got to stop by the Time Agency first.” She nodded at Jack's wrist. “We've got to get that chip out of your wrist. Could take it out myself, but I thought you might prefer not to be a fugitive every time you run into the Time Agency in the 51st century.”

“They put a chip in your wrist?” said Rose. “Aren't you ever going to be free of those people?”

“Jack hadn't been acquitted yet when I went to fetch him. Had to post bail. The Time Agency likes to keep its prisoners under surveillance. We'll land when he's due to report back to Internal Affairs.”

Rose said, “How do you know you'll land on time?” That earned her a glare from the Doctor. “Sorry, but you've got a bad track record.”

“We're going to land on time because Jack is going to help me fly the TARDIS,” the Doctor said.

Jack might have fallen over if he hadn't already been stretched out on the ground. “Huh?”

“You've been watching me fly her. You've been helping with repairs. The TARDIS likes you. We'll start simple this time, just a few auxiliary navigation functions, and work up. You'll be perfectly capable if we take it a step at a time.”

“Uh, if she's all right with it, then sure,” said Jack, awed. He no longer doubted the Doctor's trust in him, but it took more than just trust to help pilot the TARDIS. It took technical competence, mastery of space-time navigation, and clever improvisation, all traits Jack knew he had, but the Doctor had always dismissed. “How'd you like to have my hands all over your console, old girl?” He could feel an almost ticklish vibration rise up from the grass itself, and he couldn't quite hold back a giddy laugh. “I'll take that as a yes.”

* * *

 

Piloting the TARDIS with Jack at her side exceeded all of the Doctor's expectations. He did a small job – guiding the TARDIS' calculations of a subset of 4-dimensional vectors – but it was a crucial one, and he did it well. When it came to the TARDIS, it took more than just smarts to be a good pilot, though Jack had those in spades. It took the kind of intuitive touch that could only come from a rapport with ships in general and the TARDIS in particular. All in all, the Doctor should have realized much sooner how much the TARDIS liked Jack. Maybe then she would have given him the trust he deserved.

They landed in a public garden near the Time Agency ten minutes before Jack was supposed to show. “We could've landed her right on top of the teleport deck in Internal Affairs,” the Doctor said as they strolled through the ethereally-scented garden, “but I don't want the Time Agency to lay eyes on her, or they'll start getting ideas.”

A dozen security protocols later, they were back at the floating front desk in the reception area of Internal Affairs. It looked different this time, though. A holographic marquee hovered over the front desk, scrolling across messages like “All adjudicants, please report to your assigned magistrates” and “Time Agency employees are requested not to comment to the media on recent events”.

The Doctor recognized the secretary with four eyes who'd stopped Jack's execution before it was too late. “Reporting in with Shaylin Sel-Ahn,” the Doctor announced. “Has he been cleared of all charges yet?”

“One moment, please, while I call up his file.” The secretary looked down at her console for a moment. “Doctor Jane Doe? You paid his bail, correct?”

“That's me.”

The secretary made a displeased humming sound with the gauzy membranes that flowed down her back like a gossamer cloak. “Dr. Doe, we lost signal from Sel-Ahn's chip barely twenty minutes after you escorted him from this facility. I require that you – ”

The Doctor leaned across the gleaming chrome surface of the desk. “ _Has he been cleared of all charges_?”

“The magistrates have reconsidered their decision, yes, but – ”

“You were less than ten minutes away from killing an innocent man, and now you reprimand him for what he chooses to do with his reprieve from a jail sentence he never deserved in the first place? Give me his release forms, _now_.”

“How are we to know that he did not violate the terms of his – ”

“How am I to know that you're not going to lock him up again for no reason? _The release forms_.”

The gauze along the secretary's back flattened to invisibility. “Very well. I will consult my superiors.” She tapped out a few commands into her console, focused on it intently for a few moments, then looked at the Doctor with her top set of eyes. “My superiors have given me the authority to allow Sel-Ahn's release. I cannot, however, return your bail. The credits were automatically sequestered when we lost signal from Sel-Ahn's chip.”

The Doctor folded her arms across the front edge of the desk. “Fine.”

The secretary gave her a sheet of nu-paper and a stylus. The Doctor started filling out the form – she'd love to see the look on their faces when they saw she'd put down Mikaëla as her reference of good character – and heard Jack whisper in her ear, “That's 950,000 credits they're taking from you! You don't have to do this, Doc. I can wait another night in prison if it'll get your money back.”

Never setting down her stylus, the Doctor said, “You won't spend another night in a cell, lad. Your mental health's worth more to me than a bunch of credits.”

“That's not a bunch! That's a small fortune! My parents probably earn 100 credits a fortnight at most.”

Ah. So that was it. Jack's parents were refugees from the Hive's invasion of the Boe. Life was never easy for refugees on a strange planet. He was thinking of what his parents would be able to do with 950,000 credits. “Not making any promises, but I may be able to do something for your people. Just let me do this for you first.”

Jack looked conflicted, but Rose laid a hand on his arm and murmured something in his ear the Doctor couldn't make out. Finally, he nodded, and the Doctor passed the form over to him to finish. He raised his eyebrows at a few of her answers on the form, but finished without further objections. The secretary put the form face down on a scan plate and sent it for processing.

“While we wait,” the Doctor said, feigning a conversational tone, “whatever happened to Makarios Thibadeaux?” She could see Jack and Rose perk up at that.

“The Shadow Proclamation claimed jurisdiction over his case as part of their ongoing investigation into 'the Gallows',” the secretary informed them primly. Judging by the invisible scare quotes around “the Gallows”, the Time Agency's official position was still one of denial of wrongdoing. “He is no longer in our custody.”

The Doctor hid a smile behind her hand. She'd suspected that her promise to Makarios would turn out to be little more than a formality. What Mikaëla wanted to know, she found out, one way or another.

There was a quiet chime from the secretary's console. She looked at Jack. “Hold out your forearm, please.” Jack laid his chipped arm on the desk. The secretary took out what looked like a wide rubber band and put it over Jack's wrist. The band tightened around his wrist and writhed like a living thing. Jack grimaced a little at the sensation. After about a minute, the band fell off his wrist, the chip embedded in its inner surface.

The Doctor clasped Jack's shoulder. “Ready?”

He looked a little nervous, but he nodded. “Yeah. Let's go see them.”

* * *

 

It didn't take them long to find Jack's parents. Villa della Costa was arranged like a wheel, with the Central Market Plaza at the hub and boulevards radiating outward like spokes. The 'Shane refugees lived in a neighborhood at the end of one of these spokes. Their neighborhood consisted of several ramshackle longhouses thrown together with whatever siding and roofing material they could scrounge. They got plenty of odd, or sometimes even hostile, looks from the 'Shanes, for their clothing and skin made them stand out very clearly from the refugees. All of the women had elaborate tattoos on their shoulders, and some people whose gender Rose couldn't guess at had tattoos on their bare scalps. Rose got even more strange looks than the Doctor or Jack, because not a single one of the adults, male, female, or other, was under five foot eight, and most of them were better than six feet.

The poverty of the neighborhood showed not only in their architecture, but in the refugees themselves. None of them seemed to have clothes that fit properly; they mostly seemed to be cast-offs of the type of clothing Rose had seen in other neighborhoods, except for the tasseled vests the men wore. Rose hadn't seen children on the streets in any other part of the city, presumably because it was during school hours, but in this neighborhood there were children underfoot wherever they went. The most chilling sign of what the 'Shanes had gone through were a few refugees who simply sat at street corners, mumbling to themselves and staring at nothing, not even reacting when other people offered them charity.

As soon as they entered the neighborhood, Jack dropped into a 'Shane-flavored accent of the language spoken in this system, which came across to Rose's ears via the TARDIS' translation as British, as opposed to his usual American-sounding drawl. When he asked after Ivory and Collette in this idiom, he got prompt responses. Quite a few people seemed to recognize him from broadcasts on the holonet. “I knew you weren't dirty,” Rose heard some of them say. “Trying to pin every mess on the 'Shanes, that's always the way on O.B.A. Don't let 'em bring you down, son.” Others gave him suspicious glances and crossed to the other side of the street when they saw him. Along the way, one of Jack's admirers gifted him a hat, a dark cap with a sort of translucent cowl that covered his ears and the back of his neck. It clashed terribly with his RAF coat, but a smile lit up his face when he put it on that never quite faded.

One of the people Jack stopped to ask for directions pointed to a nearby longhouse and called it Nicander. The name must have meant something to Jack, because his eyes lit and he dashed off toward the house. Rose and the Doctor followed. There was a gap between two wooden planks in the side of Nicander House that they took for a door, or near enough, and stepped through. The inside of the house was ordered by some internal logic that Jack seemed to immediately understand but that remained utterly inscrutable to Rose. Curtains and drapes in muted yet interesting patterns cordoned the interior of the house into semi-private pigeonholes. Jack weaved among them as easily as Rose might navigate a Tube station. She and the Doctor could barely keep up.

Finally, Jack stopped in front of a curtain patterned in swirls of sand and bone and rustled it. “Come in,” came a voice from inside. He pulled back the curtain to reveal a sort of nest made of bean bags, quilts, and old couch cushions. Against the wall of the longhouse, which in this section was made of corrugated metal, was a set of rickety shelves made of bamboo, plastic rods, and other odds and ends. There were neatly folded clothes, eating utensils, bottles, packs of bandages, a few sheets of nu-paper, and other items Rose couldn't identify. The contents of these shelves were probably all Jack's parents owned, by the look of things. The space was lit by a lump of white material in a bowl which cast a cool glow without heat.

In the corner, a woman taller than Rose but shorter than the Doctor with salt-and-pepper curls framing her face was setting a bucket full of clothing to the floor. A thinner woman with hair cropped at her earlobes lay on her stomach in the soft nest on the floor, writing on a sheaf of nu-paper with a stylus. She set both down when she saw their visitors.

“Nazaire!” The woman in the corner let out a surprised little laugh. “I didn't expect you to be out and about so soon.”

For a moment Rose didn't realize what the woman was talking about, until she realized that Nazaire was yet another name of Jack's. If she found out about any more, she'd start to lose track.

“It's all PR,” said Jack. “It'd be embarrassing to the Time Agency to let me sit in jail when I haven't done anything wrong. They're in enough hot water as it is.”

The other woman sat up in her nest of cushions. “You!” she said, looking at the Doctor.

“Naz,” said the shorter woman, in a tone that was clearly meant to calm her wife, “did you know that we encountered this lady earlier? She was very rude to us.”

The Doctor looked like she might have a biting reply, but Rose laid a placating hand on her forearm, and she kept her peace.

“You'll have to forgive her, mum,” said Jack. “She was upset about what the Time Agency tried to do to me and took out her anger on you. Doctor, Rose, this is my mother, Collette, and this is my madrina, Ivory.”

Neither of the women offered her hand to shake, so in the absence of other courtesies Rose bowed her head. “Nice to meet you.”

“Pleasure,” said the Doctor, her face a neutral mask.

“Who are these two, Naz?” Ivory demanded. “Friends? Colleagues? Lovers, like that fellow of yours who got arrested in your place?”

“They're my friends, and they're nothing like Makarios. He's a traitor, and he'll deserve whatever he gets.”

Collette shook her head. “I still find it incredible that they managed to pin a charge on a Thibadeaux. There was either a lot of good evidence or some powerful people working against him. You're very lucky.”

Rose tried not to let her irritation show. She didn't like the implication Collette was making: that Jack wasn't lucky at all and had concocted a plan to frame Thibadeaux in his place.

“Actually,” said Jack, “he's in his great-aunt's custody right now, over at the Shadow Proclamation. I'm pretty sure she had a hand in the transfer. If she really thinks he's tarnished the family name…” He drew a line across his throat.

It wasn't quite the truth, but it wasn't quite a lie either. Mikaëla had been involved, and she was probably going do a better job of punishing him than the Time Agency would. It seemed to be an answer his parents could accept. “That's the Thibadeaux clan for you,” said Ivory. “They can't even leave criminal justice to the plebes.”

“So are you going to join back up with the Agency?” Collette asked.

Jack stared at her as if she'd asked whether he was planning to join a celibate monastery.

“No need to look so surprised,” said Collette. “I've seen the stories on the holonet. You've been cleared of all charges. They'd probably take you back.”

“Mum, they almost _killed_ me!”

“Do you have another steady, well-paying job lined up, then? The money you sent us every month made a difference for us and for all of Nicander House.”

Jack looked guilty. Their life on the TARDIS was sometimes fun, sometimes breathtaking, and almost always worthwhile, but a steady, well-paying job it wasn't. Rose knew how he felt. When she'd worked at Henrik's, she'd been able to use the money to help her mum pay the bills. She knew Jackie would prefer Rose to be bringing in a reliable paycheck than haring off into time and space with a half-mad alien.

“Hmph,” said Ivory. “I suppose you're planning to go off on some intergalactic jaunt with these two new friends of yours.”

“We've been traveling with your son already,” the Doctor put in, “and he's done a great deal of good in the places we've been. We're not just taking him on some joyride through the stars. He earned a medal in Exta!la, the capital of Zaizúr, just last week.”

“I've never heard of Zaizúr,” said Collette, with not a little skepticism. “Look, Naz. I'm sure you've been having fun with your friends, wherever it is you've been, but don't you think it's time to really do something with your life, something that will make a difference in our community? You did everything you could for Gray. I accept that. But even if you couldn't save him, you can still do something for the 'Shanes. The only other 'Shane on O.B.A. as educated and well-connected as you is Ekozma, the advocate, and he works 12 hours a day and has three children to look after. You're a celebrity, the only 'Shane ever to join the Time Agency. You're known even outside our community.

“We have to run our own schools because the local schools won't take our children. There are diseases here that don't even get treated because everyone on O.B.A. is immune, while we're vulnerable. The local children won't play with ours because they say we're dirty and our tattoos are foul. You can hop off-planet whenever you like, but this is our life, and we can't escape it. You could do something to make it better. Stay, Nazaire. Stay here, where you can do some real good.”

Jack looked miserable. It was obvious to Rose that he cared about his people and hated to see them suffer, but it was equally obvious that he didn't want to stay. Rose didn't want him to stay either, not just because she liked having him around. He would be unhappy living here, even if it did help his family and his people. Jack turned around and gave the Doctor a silent plea with his eyes, but her face was locked into neutral. It was his decision to make, and she wasn't going to give him an out by insisting that he continue traveling with her.

After a silence that felt like it was tearing at its own skin, Jack said, “I can't.” At the looks on his parents' faces, he shook his head. “No. That's not true. I could stay, if I wanted to. I accept responsibility for my choice. This isn't my home. I joined the military when I was fifteen. I was a kid. I saw things and did things no kid should ever have to do. It changed me, mostly in ways I wish it hadn't. Then I got recruited for the Time Agency. I got to travel further than I ever thought was possible, and that changed me too, for better and for worse. I hit rock bottom about a year ago. I won't tell you too much about that, but it didn't so much change me as show me how many terrible changes I'd been through. And then I met the Doctor and Rose, and that…well, I'm not sure you'd understand. But I can't stay here. My place is with them.”

Ivory and Collette looked back at him in stony silence. Rose guessed it was because they didn't want to show their guests how hurt they really were. She wouldn't like to break down crying in front of visitors to her home, either.

“So that's it,” said Ivory, after a time. “You're going to cruise off with your two new friends and your very own timeline tracer. A clean getaway.”

Jack staggered back a step as if his madrina had dealt him a physical blow. “ _No_. Ive, I didn't – this isn't – I _promised_ you,” he said, helplessly. “I thought I could help you, and I couldn't. That's all there is to it.”

“So you're saying you tried to steal it, got caught, and the Time Agency decided it was all your partner's fault and let you walk? Why don't I believe that?” Ivory said acerbically. “I can tell a trash midden by its stink, Nazaire. You haven't told us the whole truth.”

Rose could see the conflict raging within Jack. He could either walk away and let them think he was a criminal, or he could tell them the truth: that he'd decided preserving Time was more important than saving his brother. Which would hurt them more? Did they have a right to know the truth?

She thought about how lucky she was to have Jackie for a mother. The Doctor thought she was a terror. It was true that she disliked the Doctor and wished Rose had chosen a different life. But she believed with all of a mother's conviction that Rose was the most wonderful person in all the world, even if she didn't like some of the choices she'd made. That was unconditional love, as every parent ought to give a child.

Jack seemed to reach a decision. “You're right. I didn't tell you the whole truth. A lot of that was because I didn't know what happened myself. My memories of it are gone. But now I know.” He gritted his teeth for a moment, then all emotion seemed to drain away. He spoke to his parents in a monotone. “My partner and I had a scheme. It was his idea, and I saw it as an opportunity to get Gray back. My part of the plan was recon. I spent over a year running tests on the timeline tracer to find out the best way to teleport it out of the vault unnoticed. I learned about what the timeline tracer could do. It's a weapon. If you don't know what you're doing, it will hurt someone or something, no matter how you mean to use it, for good or bad.” Tears were trickling from the corners of Jack's eyes now, but his voice shook only a little. “I realized that if we used it to save Gray, it could change the course of history in ways none of us could foresee. The whole Boe could have been lost in a paradox. The whole _planet_ could have disappeared, just _gone_ , and no one would have even remembered it existed. I couldn't let that happen. So I backed out. I didn't steal it. My partner did, and he tried to pin it on me. I made my promise to you in good faith, but I broke it, because I didn't see any choice.”

“There's _always_ a choice,” Collette grated. “You can't _know_ it wouldn't have worked. You could have _tried_.”

“It wasn't worth the risk, mum. Not even for Gray.” Jack choked. The looks on his parents' faces had to be killing him by degrees, but he managed to say, “I'm sorry.”

“Get out,” Ivory said tonelessly. “I don't ever want to see you in Nicander House again.”

Jack looked to his mother in silent appeal. Collette was crying freely, but she folded her arms across her chest and looked away. He was frozen in place, unable to do as his madrina asked.

“Get out,” Ivory repeated.

The Doctor threaded her arm through Jack's. “Come along now, there's a good lad,” she murmured, her voice low and even. “We'll take you home.” She steered him gently toward the curtain and away. Rose left with them.

Once they left Nicander House, Jack pulled away from the Doctor a little, but kept a loose grip on her hand. He barely spoke, only raising his voice to occasionally point out a faster route back to where the TARDIS was parked. Rose wished he would talk, even if it was senseless prattle. She couldn't remember the last time he'd been this quiet. When they got to the TARDIS, he stepped out in front and took out a key, sliding into the lock and turning with slow reverence. Rose's eyes widened, and she looked across at the Doctor. She'd finally given Jack a TARDIS key, just as he deserved.

The Doctor shut the door to the TARDIS behind them, and some sort of tension seemed to drain out of Jack. “Thanks. For taking me,” he said. “It didn't go as I'd – it wasn't – I'm still thankful. Despite everything. Even just seeing all the 'Shanes again meant the world to me.” He let out a shuddering breath. “Can we go to the garden room?”

Rose was glad he invited them along to the garden room. She'd feel like a monster if she left him alone, even if it was what he wanted. They all went to the garden room. Rose and the Doctor sat. “Stay there,” said Jack. “I just need a moment.” He went for a walk through the garden, brushing his fingers against leaves and flower petals as he passed them.

Rose curled her fingers in the grass, and found that it was humming softly, the sensation of music rather than the sound, but music all the same. When Jack returned from his walk, he seemed more focused. He wiped a tear track from his face with the back of his hand, then said, “I can't help the 'Shanes, Doc. Not the way my parents wanted me to, at least. That's not me, and I've accepted that. But there's got to be something. What can we do to help them?”


	5. Chapter 5

The Doctor considered Jack's plea for a silent minute. Then she said, “I'm not sure yet. I can find out. There may not be anything we can do, though, and you'll have to accept that.”

“I understand,” said Jack.

“The TARDIS and I can run an assessment on the timeline of your people, to see where it's headed and if it can be altered. It'll take a few minutes.” The Doctor exchanged a look with Rose, and Jack could tell that Rose was being silently asked to look after him for a little while. For once, Jack didn't mind. He was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, and he knew from injuries past that Rose was an attentive caretaker.

“Thank you,” said Jack, quietly.

The Doctor stood and smiled down at him. “No need to thank me. I owe you this much at the very least.”

“D'you want me to stay, or should I make you some tea?” Rose asked, once the Doctor had left the garden room.

Jack was tired and a little thirsty, but he didn't want to be alone. “Stay. Please.” He reached out for her hand. She took it.

“Your parents are wrong about you. You know that, yeah?”

Jack made a noncommittal noise.

“They think you're selfish, that you did it all for yourself. They're wrong. You never thought about yourself. Even when you wanted to steal the timeline tracer, it wasn't for money. You lost your memories, your job, everything, because you didn't want to risk other people to help yourself.”

“I guess I always thought…” Jack blinked a few times. He was done crying over this, damn it. “I always thought that if I finally did the right thing, if I didn't screw up, my parents would come around. They'd love me again, just like they did before what happened with Gray. But even though I did something right, for once, it didn't make them love me. It just hurt them even more.”

Rose smiled a little and squeezed his hand. “You're right. It didn't make them love you. But that's because they don't see you at all.”

Jack looked into Rose's warm brown eyes for a moment, and the meaning of her words sunk in. His parents didn't understand why he'd made his choices. The Doctor and Rose did.

His surprise and disbelief must have showed on his face, because Rose said, “Just because the Doctor won't admit it doesn't mean I can't. I love you, Jack Harkness, and don't you think for a minute that you don't deserve it.” She leaned over and kissed the top of his head. It made him feel, for a moment, like she was older and wiser than he was. It probably would take him years to understand the ways of the heart the way she did.

He wasn't done crying, as it turned out. But these were the kind of tears that came from everything being so painfully right that every emotion he'd held close to himself for so many years flew away from him in all directions, like flakes of stone at the blow of a sculptor's chisel. “Yeah,” he said, eyes closed. “I love you both. I have for a while now. And funny as it sounds coming from me, I have no idea what to do about it.”

“We won't start anything without the Doctor,” said Rose. “We might have to wait a while, but it's worth it, yeah?”

It was. And with Rose at his side, the thought wasn't so frightening. Maybe they could all have what they really wanted, if the Doctor was willing to try. Jack knew he was. But it would be a while yet. He was still all jagged edges, inside; he needed time, to smooth it into something that could love properly, the way Rose and the Doctor deserved to be loved. He nodded, and just sat there for a while, taking in the golden light and spicy scents of the garden.

The Doctor came back in holding a tea tray. It was stocked with a teapot, three cups, sugar, milk, lemon, honey, and Jammie Dodgers. She set it on the ground and sat with her long legs crossed. She served Jack tea just the way he liked it, with honey and lemon. He realized he was starving and ate a few Jammie Dodgers. It wasn't a meal, but it would tide him over until they could have a proper one. From the way Rose fell upon the biscuits, she was hungry too. Once Jack had taken a few sips of tea, he asked, “What'd you find out, Doc?”

She rolled her eyes at the nickname, but her smile was affectionate. She took her own sip of tea, and by the time she set her cup back down on its saucer, her expression had become serious and level. “I was able to find two temporally stable futures for the Boeshane refugee settlement in Villa della Costa,” she said. “I can alter it from its current course, but it's a binary state. One or the other.”

Jack swallowed tea. “What are they?”

“The turning point is the education system, far as I can tell. Your mother mentioned that the schools in Villa della Costa won't take 'Shane children. That means the 'Shanes have got to come up with their own education system. Each longhouse educates its own. They don't have the resources to educate kids properly – only a few make it to higher education. They'll be an underclass, always at the outskirts of society. But they keep the traditions alive. The arts, poetry, and stories of your people are alive and well for centuries to come. The poets-in-exile of the Boeshane.

“Boeshane's children can have a better life, though, if we do something to reform the education system. They'll be educated with the other children of Villa della Costa, learn their history, their accent, their culture, and what it takes to succeed in their world. Boeshane's children will prosper, but they'll forget everything they were. The Peninsula will be just some funny old place where their grandparents lived. None of them will even go back to visit their roots. Why bother? There's nothing for them there.

“So, Jack, your choice. Do you want to interfere?”

It was both an easy choice and an impossible one. He knew he wouldn't hurt anyone he loved no matter what he chose, which made it easy. The Doctor and Rose wouldn't judge him for his choice, and his parents had no idea he was making it. But it was also difficult because he couldn't really comprehend the costs of each choice. When he'd chosen to teleport the bomb into his Chula ship, he'd understood what his life was worth, and decided it was worth sacrificing if it might save the human race. Presumably, he'd understood what his brother's life was worth, and that it wasn't worth risking a planet's timeline for. How could he place a value on the cultural traditions of his people? Was it worth more than a brighter future for Boeshane's children?

“I've never done this before,” Jack admitted. “My job at the Time Agency was basically criminal justice – tracking down people selling anachronistic contraband, stopping people from becoming their own grandparents, that kind of thing. I never had to decide the future of an entire culture. You've seen this happen before. You've had to make these choices. If we change history, and I talk to the kids whose lives I've changed when they're grown up – will they thank me? What if I don't change it, and talk to those same kids living on the street? What would they have to say?”

“Some would thank you. Some would curse you. No choice you make will please everyone. That's why it isn't easy.”

Jack thought some more. He thought about the times in his life when he'd been happiest and most miserable. The worst time of his life had been as a con man, when he'd had a glittering timeship, glamorous destinations, and a cargo full of priceless contraband. The best times had been as a child, playing on the dunes with Franklin and Gray – and now, when he owned nothing but his wrist strap and his compact laser deluxe. If he stepped in, Boeshane's children would prosper – but would it mean anything at all if they lost everything they were?

“No,” he said, finally. “I won't interfere. The 'Shanes may be poor and beaten down, but they're still 'Shanes. They should stay that way.”

The Doctor nodded. “Understood. Anything else I can do?”

Jack thought about that for a moment. Part of him wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed, as much to keep himself from thinking too much as to sleep. But he needed something more before he did that. “I want to visit the 'Shane refugees. In the future. I want to see what happens.”

“Anything in particular you want to see? Places you want to visit?”

“You said they'd keep the traditions alive, right? I'd like to go to a Spring Tide Sabbath, if that's all right with you.” Jack held his breath. He hadn't been to a Spring Tide Sabbath since he was fourteen. He loved them best of all the Boeshane's traditions, but he wasn't sure if the Doctor would agree. It wasn't something you went to with just anybody.

“Haven't heard of it,” said the Doctor.

Jack felt a little embarrassed. He couldn't just assume the Doctor knew everything. “It's held at every spring tide – on O.B.A. that'd be every 56 days or so. During the second low tide, everyone in the longhouse comes together, though anyone who wants to be a part of it is welcome. It's about community. Every member of the longhouse has to join the chant at one point or another, but no one ever has to chant alone. There's also a meal, and, ah…” Jack hesitated. This was the part that made the Spring Tide Sabbath intimate and special, the part that he wasn't sure the Doctor and Rose would accept. “No one's allowed to feed themselves. You bring food from the table for your friends and family and feed them. It's about supporting each other – you don't have to provide for yourself, at Spring Tide. You know you'll be taken care of.”

“I'd like to try it,” said Rose.

“It's important to you, Jack,” said the Doctor. “'Course we can go.”

Jack's heart lightened. “We'll need to prepare a dish of our own, to bring to the communal table.”

“I'll make treacle tart,” said Rose.

Jack was about to offer to help – he was always eager to learn about 21st century Earth cooking – but the Doctor stood up and offered her hand to Jack. “We're going to the Wardrobe Room while Rose bakes,” she said. “I'm taking you as close to your time as I can, so the tradition will be close to the one you remember, but you're well-known among the 'Shanes in your time. Don't want to risk anyone recognizing you, even 100 years later. I'm going to make you harder to recognize.”

Jack let the Doctor help him to his feet. The Doctor was offering to play dress-up with him as the model. He wasn't about to pass up that opportunity.

* * *

The treacle tart came out of the oven smelling like heaven. Rose wasn't a good baker by any means, but there was nothing like piping-hot treacle tart, and besides, she was sure the TARDIS had helped. It shouldn't have taken only 45 minutes to finish, and she wouldn't have thought of adding ground ginger if there hadn't been some on the bottom shelf of the cupboard, right in her line of sight. She waited a few minutes for it to cool, put it in a cake tin with a lid, and headed for the Wardrobe Room.

It took her a moment to find the Doctor and Jack. They were toward the back, her line of sight to them obscured by uncountable racks of clothing. When she did spot them, she nearly dropped the treacle tart.

She was greeted by a vision of male beauty like nothing she'd ever seen. The Doctor had done something to change Jack's eyes from sea blue to sunny green, like light shining through a forest canopy. Extensions lengthened Jack's hair into a dark ponytail tied at the nape of his neck, with a fringe sweeping elegantly across his forehead. The clothing, though, transformed him more than anything else. It was made of something silky and blue-grey, all liquid and loose around his arms and legs. Around his torso, though, it was precisely cut, hugging his waist and flaring out at the hips. It de-emphasized the hard, flat planes of his body and brought out sweeping lines and curves that Rose hadn't even known were there. It gave him an androgynous, elegant aspect, like a forest spirit from a fairy tale book. She couldn't imagine a casual observer pinning him for who he was, though she thought it didn't make Jack look like someone else so much as show a different side of what was already in him. The sparkle behind those green eyes was just the same as it was behind blue.

“I know I'm gorgeous, but if you keep your jaw hanging open like that, something might fly in.”

Rose's mouth kept working open and shut. “Don't you think he'll stand out a bit?” she managed to say.

“What Jack's wearing is all the rage in the nearby eiDann district, which according to my research is where most of the tourists to the Spring Tide Sabbath come in from,” said the Doctor, sounding smug at the effect of her handiwork. “There'll be plenty of handsome fellows with long hair and synthasilk trousers.”

Jack grinned. “I bet I pull it off better.”

“Should we be dressed like that?” said Rose, though she had her doubts that the Doctor would ever make a concession to rules of fashion beyond changing her jumper.

“Nope. We're offworlder friends of his, coming to visit. He needs a cover to explain why he knows about Boeshane customs. We don't. But remember, Captain – you can't act like you're one of them. We're cutting it close with the timeline as is.”

Jack nodded. The movement made his fringe shift and flow across his face. Rose tried not to stare. She got a clue that she might not be hiding it so well when Jack gave her a saucy wink.

“If you two are done flirting, can we get a move on?” said the Doctor, raising an eyebrow.

“Says the lady who just had her hands all over me,” Jack leered. “With hands like yours, you could drive me wild with just a tape measure and a yard of synthasilk.”

The Doctor turned toward the console room with exaggerated dignity. “Less talking, more TARDIS piloting!”

Jack couldn't help but leap at the mention of helping to fly the TARDIS, and he caught up to the Doctor with long strides.

Rose loved to watch him at it. Jack regarded every new control on the console the Doctor showed him with a delight that made his face look open and young. She also loved the way the Doctor guided him through the motions, sometimes clasping her hand over his to show the way he ought to turn a dial, or standing behind him with a grip on his shoulders and adjusting his position along the console. When they were done practicing, they started up the materialization sequence, and the only communication they needed was a series of glances and nods. The TARDIS rasped and groaned like she always did, but the console room didn't pitch and sway like a ship in a storm. Rose kept her footing the whole way and didn't drop the cake tin.

When Rose stepped out through the TARDIS doors, a gust of salty air engulfed her and whipped her hair around her face in a golden tangle. The fluid fabric around Jack's legs and arms fluttered about in the wind. The Doctor, with her short hair and no-nonsense clothing, was unruffled.

Down on the red-gold sand, one group of 'Shanes was putting up a canopy, while another picked up litter from the beach. Many of them had tattoos like the ones Rose had seen 100 years before, but now most of them were in color instead of just black. Their clothes looked different, but that was because they wore mostly castoffs, and the fashions of the rest of the city had changed.

“Same old tent,” said Jack. “We never had a clean-up crew beforehand, but back on the Boe we'd never have let the beach get this trashed in the first place.”

They walked down to the newly pitched canopy, smiling at the clean-up crew as they passed. Lanterns lacquered in shades of red and gold hung from the poles supporting the canopy, though they weren't yet lit; the sun was only just beginning to lower over the ocean. The sky was deepening from yellow-green to leaf-green, the same color as Jack's contact lenses.

A 'Shane with a bald head and scalp tattoos welcomed them to the communal tent and showed Rose where to put her treacle tart. Already the low table was stocked with foods she didn't recognize but that smelled delicious all the same. 'Shanes and tourists were trickling in and adding their own contributions to the table. The Doctor had been right; there were a few visitors outfitted in the same style as Jack. Jack had also been right: he made it look better than they did.

There were woven mats laid out under the tent, the weave tight enough to keep out sand. Jack sat on one of the mats, and Rose and the Doctor joined him, one to each side, bracketing him. A hum began to resonate through the tent, seemingly without source. All the 'Shanes had their lips pressed together, so it was impossible to tell who was making the sound. The hum deepened and split into harmonies. The tallest 'Shanes reached up and lit the lanterns, illuminating the tent with the same red-gold color as the sand beneath them. Beyond, the sky had turned a deep emerald, the setting sun trailing streamers of yellow fire. The tide was ebbing away, leaving behind a widening ribbon of wet maroon sand.

Most of the hum fell away, leaving only a slender thread of sound to weave its way around the tent. Several 'Shanes rose from a seated position to their knees, hands spread over their thighs. The background hum changed into a murmur and hush, like the sound of waves. There were a few shrill, quiet cries, like the calls of distant seabirds. Two of the 'Shanes began to chant, somewhere between singing and speech, their voices weaving over and under and through each other:

 _“As you look back to shore in the stern of your boat,  
and hold close the letters your family wrote,  
Remember what Genki once said to his daughter:  
'No sailor is ever alone on the water.'  
Genki had traveled the sea many years,  
and wanted to banish his little one's fears.  
She said, 'I will sail to a sea far from home,  
My only companions the waves and the foam.'"_

New voices joined the chorus, adding the whisper of wind over the ocean.

 _"Her father assured her, 'Wherever you go,  
From shorelines of desert to shorelines of snow,  
The sailors of Boeshane will muster their fleet  
And send all that troubles you to its defeat.  
The sailors of Boeshane look after their own  
No matter how far off their daughters have flown.'  
So as you gaze back from your boat to the shore,  
Remember the quest all your wandering's for:  
You'll find all the children who've flown to the winds,  
And bring back their journey to where it begins.”_

Jack's eyes shone, a simple little smile on his face, and Rose realized that this must be taking him back to when he was young and truly believed that anyone who wandered would one day find a way home. His life since then had taught him that wasn't true. Rose hoped that she and the Doctor had helped undo that harsh lesson.

As the last voices trailed off, the 'Shane who had first welcomed them to the tent stood and said, “We invite you to share our meal with each other.”

Jack extended his arms to either side, blocking Rose and the Doctor from standing up. “Let me serve you first,” he said. Rose was about to protest – they were doing this for him, after all, so they ought to serve him first – but Jack said, “Please. I know the food here better than you do, and besides, it's – it's an honor. To do this for you.”

The Doctor nodded to Rose. They sat back and let Jack fill a tray with selections from the table. He took a flagon and went up to a large bowl filled with some sort of drink. “What's this?” he asked a 'Shane.

“Caithrie brew. Well, not exactly caithrie brew,” the 'Shane admitted. “Caithrie is native to I.B.A., and doesn't really like this climate. They grow it in hothouses in downtown Villa, but we can't afford it for anything but the Great Festivals. This brew's made from a fermentation of herbs and grains that get as close to the taste as we can make it.”

“We'll give it a try,” said Jack, and he dipped the flagon into the bowl. He came back and set the flagon, the tray, and a long, flat spoon on the mat. He knelt facing Rose and the Doctor. “Have a sip and tell me how you like it,” he said, raising the flagon to the Doctor's lips. He tilted it, very gently, so that none of it spilled.

“It's good,” said the Doctor. “Bitter, hints of anise, just a touch of sweetness. Let Rose have some.”

Rose blushed when Jack pressed the edge of the flagon to her lips. She hadn't had anyone treat her like this since she'd got a bad case of the flu a few years back and her mum had had to help her drink her soup. Mickey and Jimmy had definitely never treated her like this. He watched her face as she drank the brew, watching for her reaction. He wanted so much for her to be pleased, even though she wasn't the one who had just been rejected by her family. “Thanks, Jack,” she said. “It's really tasty.”

He set the flagon back down on the mat and took what looked like some kind of root vegetable dipped in sauce from the bowl. He offered it to the Doctor, who ate it in two large bites. “My dad had a special recipe for that sauce,” said Jack, watching her eat. “I'll bet this isn't the same.”

“You chose it out for me,” said the Doctor. “That's what matters. If I wanted the best food in the galaxy, I'd go to the gourmet restaurant on Eta Kappa and have a sumptuous meal served to me by strangers.”

The Doctor was right, Rose decided as she ate a spoonful of stew Jack gave her. It wasn't the best food she'd ever had during her travels with the Doctor, objectively speaking, but she enjoyed this meal more than any other because of the look on Jack's face whenever she liked what he served her, and the strange asymmetry of the Doctor being looked after by Jack.

“My turn,” said Rose, taking the bowl from Jack. “That stew was so good I won't let you deprive yourself any longer. Sit down.”

“Let me,” Jack said. “You haven't even tried the roast yet. I can wait.”

“Jack,” she said, more firmly. “You've had your heart broken and almost died. I was worried sick about you. I want to help make it better. Sit.”

Jack settled back on the mat without further protest. Rose lifted a big spoonful of stew to his mouth. He watched her, saw how carefully she balanced the spoon in her hand, making sure not to drop any on his nice clothes. “Slowly,” she said. “It's hot. Don't want you to scald your tongue.” He lapped at it slowly, deep contentment spreading over his face. “When's the last time someone did this for you?” Rose asked.

When Jack was finished, he said, “Gray, at my last Spring Tide Sabbath on the Boe. He'd never gotten to feed anyone before. Children under ten usually don't; they make too much of a mess. He was so happy to finally get to feed his big brother at a Spring Tide Sabbath.”

Rose could hear the choked-back tears in his voice. The Doctor clasped his shoulder. “We're happy to do this for you, too,” she said. “Give me that spoon, Rose.” She fed him another spoonful of stew, just as slowly and carefully as Rose had. By the time she was done, Jack was smiling again.

“How about these?” said Rose, dipping the spoon in a bowl of dark, flat grains. “You like them?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, an undercurrent of mischief and laughter in his voice. He leaned in toward the spoon, took a mouthful, then licked off the remainder, his tongue swirling around the spoon in a way that made Rose wonder what else he could do with it. Judging by his devilish wink, that had been his intention. The Doctor rolled her eyes good-naturedly and gave Jack one of the vegetables dipped in sauce. He sucked off the sauce in an even more cheerfully obscene fashion than he'd licked the spoon, then swallowed down the vegetable whole, which no one with a human mouth and throat should have been able to do, by all rights.

“I'm going to feed someone who treats her food like food,” Rose said. “More caithrie brew, Doctor?”

The Doctor nodded. Rose held the flagon to her mouth, but she wasn't as deft with it as Jack had been; she tilted it too far, and some of the brew trickled out of the corners of the Doctor's mouth, dripping down her chin and the underside of her jaw. Rose had a sudden urge to lick it off her skin, so strong that she had to bite the inside of her lip to keep from acting on it.

“Sorry,” she said, blushing. She put the flagon down and wiped away the brew with the backs of her fingers. From the bowl she took a skewer loaded up with roasted vegetables and meat. “Here, have this. Don't think I can possibly make a mess out of it.”

“Don't worry, Rose,” said Jack. “This is good practice for the next time the Doctor gets sick or hurt and you have to force-feed her medicine. I've never seen a patient that stubborn.”

The Doctor pointedly ignored Jack's comment and took a slow, deliberate bite from the skewer.

“Or just force-feed her, period. I know you've got a Time Lady metabolism and all, but I hardly ever see you eat anything. Even a Time Lady's got to eat her veggies once in a – ”

The Doctor cut him off by flinging a small, round fruit at him. He caught it in his mouth. Even the Doctor looked impressed.

Rose fed the Doctor more roasted food from the skewer. “Blimey, Jack, you ought to enter some sort of oral gymnastics competition.”

“You volunteering to be one of the judges?” said Jack, eyes sparkling.

The Doctor seized a thin sort of pancake from the bowl and stuffed it in Jack's mouth. “Hush, you.” She took the skewer from Rose and offered it. “Try these, Rose. You'll like them.”

There were only a few chunks of meat left on the skewer, and Rose's mouth nearly touched the Doctor's fingers as she ate them off. “Mmm,” she said, licking her lips. She felt a rush of triumph when she saw the Doctor focus intently on her mouth.

“Dessert time,” said Jack, holding a sticky round pastry in front of Rose's face. “Open wide.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” Rose teased, but she opened her mouth and let Jack feed her. She could feel the pads of his fingers brush her lips, and her mouth watered from more than just the sweet, nutty taste of the pastry.

“Your turn, Jack,” said the Doctor. She took another pastry and fed it to him slowly, letting him savor it bite by bite. He kept his eyes locked on hers the whole time, as if by magnetism. Rose couldn't look away.

After Jack finished the dessert, the eye contact lingered for a moment. “You want dessert, Doctor?”

The Doctor sniffed the sticky residue the pastry had left on her fingers. “No thanks. Too sweet.” Then Jack reached for the flagon and tipped more caithrie brew into Rose's mouth.

She settled back on the mat, the caithrie brew making the world feel warm and syrupy at its edges. Only a few slivers of deep green light lingered over the ocean. Inner Beta Aquarii had risen, casting rusty light over the dark waters. She saw Jack looking, too. “D'you miss it?” she asked.

“Yes and no.” Jack gazed at the planet that had once been his home. “I sometimes miss the dunes I used to play on, and the three moons, and catching fish in the tidal pools. But I know it wouldn't be like I remember it if I went back, even if the whole peninsula hadn't been bombed to slag. I used to think there were spirits there, among the dunes. The spirits were supposed to take joy in children's play. I thought I was making the Peninsula a better place just by being there. I don't think that way anymore.”

“It's true on the TARDIS,” Rose said. “The TARDIS has a sort of spirit, and she's happy you're there. You wouldn't be able to pilot her otherwise.”

Jack looked to the Doctor for affirmation. She nodded. “Rose is right. You make the TARDIS a better place. Not just for her, either. Remember that next time someone accuses you. Prison is a lot easier to bear when you know you don't belong there.”

“I didn't think you'd come for me. I thought you'd be glad I was in jail where I belonged.”

“You know where you belong,” said Rose. She took his hand. The Doctor took the other.

“Yeah,” said Jack, his voice small and overwhelmed, as if he couldn't quite believe what he was saying. “I do.”

* * *

The Doctor stood alone in the console room.

She'd just seen her companions off to bed. More specifically, she'd seen Jack off to bed, over his protests that he didn't need the extra attention. She'd never seen his bedroom before and had wanted to make sure that her previous hostility toward Jack hadn't manifested itself in the room the TARDIS had provided him. The TARDIS, to her relief, had known better. The room was smaller than the Doctor imagined a man of Jack's size and habits would prefer, but it was cozy and well-appointed. The floor had a hollow in its center lined with pillows and quilts, rather like the nest in his parents' nook of Nicander House. Jack had stripped down to his pants, shed his disguise, and curled up in the center, falling asleep almost instantly.

A tinny jingle sounded through the console room, jarring the Doctor from her thoughts. It was coming from Rose's hoodie, which she'd shrugged off and left on the jumpseat. It had to be her superphone ringing. The Doctor ought to let it go to voice mail, as Rose wasn't there to answer, but what if it was Jackie with something important? Rose would be upset if she'd missed a call from Jackie about aliens breaking down her door. If it wasn't urgent, the Doctor could just ask the caller to leave Rose a message, which she could deliver in the morning.

The Doctor took the superphone from the pocket of Rose's hoodie and answered the call. “Hello. Rose's phone. This is the Doctor speaking.”

“Oh, good. I thought this might be the best way to reach you,” said a steady alto. “You really ought to get a phone number for the TARDIS, though I don't suppose you'd ever answer it.”

The Doctor almost dropped the phone in surprise. “Mikaëla?”

“You are a bad, bad Time Lady, Dame Doctor. I found out what happened to that young man of yours. You ought to have told me. I am very displeased with my great-nephew.”

The Doctor almost retorted that Jack was not her young man, until she realized that in every way that mattered, he was. “I couldn't have, Mikaëla, not with him there. He's in awe of you. He'd've been mortified if I'd told you everything, not to mention scared. I think a part of him still thought he had to be guilty when we were in the Gallows.”

“You should have called me as soon as you learned of his wrongful arrest. I would have sorted it all out.”

“It had to be me and Rose. Me especially. I hadn't trusted him, Mikaëla, even though he deserved it. I had to be the one to acquit him. It was… justice.”

“If you had called me instead, he wouldn't have been almost killed.”

“He needed it to be me who got him out of there,” the Doctor insisted. “You didn't see his face when I bailed him out of prison.”

“Justice it may have been, but you cut your rescue very close indeed. Next time you have to deal with an interstellar bureaucracy, spare the heroics and call me. I got my great-nephew out of the Time Agency's claws in less than a day. I know what I'm about. More importantly, they know what I'm about, and they don't dare refuse me.”

“What did you do with Makarios?” asked the Doctor with wry amusement. “He was already bound for a lengthy prison sentence, if not for life. What better discipline do you have in store for him?”

“I've conscripted him to be my personal assistant.”

The Doctor choked.

“Not his ideal career choice, I'm sure, but it will do him much more good than his stint at the Time Agency ever did. He has the technical skills for it, certainly, if not the willingness. I do not, however, require his willingness. I simply prefer it.”

“As long as he hasn't got any colleagues to stab in the back.”

“What Makarios did to your young man was abominable, it's true. Why didn't you detect the damage to his timeline sooner?”

“I know. I could've prevented the whole disaster if I'd only checked his timeline properly. You should've seen Rose when we figured that out. She looked like might spit nails.”

“Dame Tyler has a great deal more sense than you do, it seems. You don't deserve her.”

“I know.” The Doctor stared down at her shoes.

“Don't use that tone of voice with me. That's not what I meant, and you know it. None of us deserve the ones we love, but we get them anyway, and we don't let anything take them away. It's what the Universe gives us in return for all our misery.”

“You have the strangest theology of anyone I've ever met, Mikaëla,” said the Doctor, smiling.

“It was true, though, was it not? What I said to you the day you left?”

“'To those whom great trials are given, great helpmeets are given also.' I didn't want a helpmeet, back then. Never had a great track record with them.”

“Nonsense. Every one of your companions I've met has been the better for traveling with you, and if they've been hurt, it's mostly because they chose to put themselves at risk in a good service. Besides, Dame Doctor, have you considered that you might be the helpmeet? Your Jack has just been through a great trial, after all.”

The Doctor was so surprised by that last remark that she didn't quite know what to say. She and Rose had helped Jack through one of the most difficult times of his life, just as Mikaëla had helped the Doctor through one of hers. She imagined Mikaëla adding a tally mark to her scorecard of times she'd startled the Doctor into speechlessness.

“If you break their hearts, I'll come after you,” said Mikaëla.

“I always break their hearts, Mikaëla.”

“I know. But you've got to promise yourself that this time, you won't. Give yourself hope.”

Hope. The Doctor had wrung all her hope dry when she'd crashed in Mikaëla's backyard one morning. Rose had never even dared to hope that she'd be anything more than a shopgirl. Jack had been stranded without hope in a Time Agency execution chamber, waiting for a death he thought he deserved. The Doctor had broken so many people over the centuries, but Mikaëla was right. She could forgive herself a little, just enough to hope.

The Doctor whispered into the phone, “I promise.”


End file.
